Institute for Gravitational Research

Build-a-Detector workshop 2025

For Whom:

This is the second year this workshop will be running and we hope to welcome master and phD students eager to learn about the fascinating world of Gravitational wave research!

Date:

10th - 21st November 2025

Aim:

The workshop will teach students about gravitational wave (GW) science and the necessary considerations taken in order to design and concept-build a gravitational wave detector as well as the likely signals to be measured. A set of lectures will be given on the main budget noises as well as the possible sources to detect. There will be assignments at the end of each lecture which will be discussed in each Q&A session. The last three days of the workshop will be focused on the teams designing their own gravitational wave detector with its own noise budget and source plot. The team with the best design will be awarded a prize.

Program Features:

• Learn GW science from expert GW scientists from all around the globe!
• Opportunity to learn about requirements and demands needed for gravitational wave detectors.
• Exciting opportunity for the students to collaborate and design their own detector and win prizes.

About the workshop:

• Duration : two week long programme (10 days)
• Lectures will be pre-recorded and Q&As will be hosted live via Zoom.
• All Attendees will be given a certificate for participation and the team with the “best” concept design will be awarded a prize. The winning team will be awared a visit to The University of Glasgow and Startchlyde University to tour their labs and see the work being done. They will also give a presentation of their design to members of the Insititute for Gravitational research.

Contact:

Should you have any question please contact: Dr. Mariela Masso Reid

Timetable:

Build-a-detector timetable

Example notebook by Dr. Kuns

Here’s example notebook that loads a custom noise budget, makes some plots, changes some parameters, and then makes some more plots.

Also attached the custom for Aplus but allows you to see what to do. Put both the ifo.yaml file and the init.py file into a folder called MyDetector. When you call load_budget, the argument should be the path to MyDetector folder.

Download file