Dr. Volker Quetschke earned his doctoral degree at the Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany working on identifying and reducing the noise of laser systems. His research focusses 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 Lasers and Auxiliary Optics working group of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. Recent additions to his research agenda include a space laser for the Laser Interferometer Lunar Antenna (LILA) project and the Space Simulator, a cryogenic vacuum test system for space hardware.
Space Conference Speaker
Volker Quetschke
Professor & Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Programs in the College of Sciences at UTRGV
