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Dr. Volker Quetschke is a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Associate Dean of Doctoral Recruiting in the Graduate College at UTRGV. He earned his doctoral degree at the Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany working on identifying and reducing the noise of laser systems. His research focuses on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) where he is involved in improving the input optics and designing the next generation detector. He is a member of the project that led to the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves” and a recipient of the Breakthrough Prize 2016 for detection of Gravitational Waves 100 years after Albert Einstein predicted their existence. He chairs the Instrument Science Division of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. Recent additions to his research agenda include co-leading the development of the Laser Interferometer Lunar Antenna (LILA) mission and developing a Space Simulator, a cryogenic vacuum test system for space hardware.