Robert Owen

Biography

I work at the interface of gravitation theory, astrophysics, and computation. Most of my research is with the SXS collaboration, a leading research collaboration focusing on computational general relativity and other exotic astrophysical theory. We use supercomputers to solve Einstein's field equations of general relativity to model the collisions of black holes and neutron stars, which are important sources of gravitational waves. This modeling is crucial for detection of these waves, and for the astrophysical interpretation of such detections. Modeling of these systems also provides a convenient testing ground for understanding more basic open questions about the nature of the classical gravitational field.