LIGO Scientific Collaboration
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration is a scientific collaboration of international physics institutes and research groups dedicated to the search for gravitational waves.
History
The LSC was established in 1997, under the leadership of Barry Barish. Its mission is to ensure equal scientific opportunity for individual participants and institutions by organizing research, publications, and all other scientific activities, and it includes scientists from both LIGO Laboratory and collaborating institutions. Barish appointed Rainer Weiss as the first spokesperson.LSC members have access to the US-based Advanced LIGO detectors in Hanford, Washington and in Livingston, Louisiana, as well as the GEO 600 detector in Sarstedt, Germany. Under an agreement with the European Gravitational Observatory, LSC members also have access to data from the Virgo detector in Pisa, Italy. While the LSC and the Virgo Collaboration are separate organizations, they cooperate closely and are referred to collectively as "LVC".
The current LSC Spokesperson is Patrick Brady of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The Executive Director of the LIGO Laboratory is David Reitze from the University of Florida.
On 11 February 2016, the LIGO and Virgo collaborations announced that they succeeded in making the first direct gravitational wave observation on 14 September 2015.
In 2016, Barish received the Enrico Fermi Prize "for his fundamental contributions to the formation of the LIGO and LIGO-Virgo scientific collaborations and for his role in addressing challenging technological and scientific aspects whose solution led to the first detection of gravitational waves".
Collaboration members
Membership of LIGO Scientific Collaboration as of November 2015 is detailed in the table below.| Institution | Country | Members | Website |
| Abilene Christian University | 2 | ||
| Albert-Einstein-Institute, Hannover | 79 | , | |
| Albert-Einstein-Institute, Potsdam-Golm | 21 | ||
| American University | 4 | ||
| Andrews University | 6 | ||
| Australian National University | 16 | ||
| California Institute of Technology | 93 | , | |
| California State University, Fullerton | 15 | ||
| Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics | 4 | ||
| Cardiff University | 28 | ||
| Carleton College | 8 | ||
| Charles Sturt University | 1 | ||
| Chennai Mathematical Institute | 1 | ||
| College of William & Mary | 3 | ||
| Columbia University | 8 | ||
| Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University | 8 | ||
| Eötvös Loránd University | 9 | ||
| Georgia Institute of Technology | 20 | ||
| Goddard Space Flight Center | 5 | ||
| Hanford Observatory | 38 | ||
| Hanyang University | 1 | ||
| Hobart and William Smith Colleges | 4 | ||
| IAP, Nizhny Novgorod | 8 | ||
| ICTP-SAIFR | 1 | ||
| ICTS-TIFR | 9 | ||
| IISER-KOL | 3 | ||
| IISER-TVM | 5 | ||
| Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar | 3 | ||
| IndIGO | 59 | ||
| INPE | 6 | ||
| IPR-Bhat | 10 | ||
| IUCAA | 14 | ||
| Kenyon College | 9 | ||
| King's College London | 1 | ||
| Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information | 4 | ||
| Leibniz University Hannover | 8 | ||
| Livingston Observatory | 35 | ||
| Louisiana State University | 16 | ||
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 35 | ||
| Monash University | 9 | ||
| Montana State University | 3 | ||
| Montclair State University | 3 | ||
| Moscow State University | 11 | ||
| National Institute of Mathematical Sciences | 4 | ||
| National Tsing Hua University | 3 | ||
| Northwestern University | 16 | ||
| Penn State University | 7 | ||
| Pusan National University | 3 | ||
| Rochester Institute of Technology | 13 | ||
| RRCAT, Indore | 9 | ||
| Rutherford Appleton Laboratory | 2 | ||
| Seoul National University | 1 | ||
| Sonoma State University | 5 | ||
| Southern University | 1 | ||
| Stanford University | 18 | ||
| Swinburne University of Technology | 12 | ||
| Syracuse University | 31 | ||
| Texas Tech University | 8 | ||
| The Chinese University of Hong Kong | 12 | ||
| The University of Melbourne | 3 | ||
| The University of Sheffield | 5 | ||
| Tata Institute of Fundamental Research | 5 | ||
| Trinity University | 2 | ||
| Tsinghua University | 5 | ||
| University of Alabama in Huntsville | 2 | ||
| University of Adelaide | 4 | ||
| University of Birmingham | 29 | ||
| University of Brussels | 4 | ||
| University of Cambridge | 6 | ||
| University of Chicago | 4 | ||
| University of Florida | 26 | ||
| University of Glasgow | 61 | ||
| University of Hamburg | 6 | ||
| University of Maryland | 7 | ||
| University of Michigan | 10 | ||
| University of Minnesota | 5 | ||
| University of Mississippi | 10 | ||
| University of Oregon | 10 | ||
| University of Sannio | 10 | ||
| University of Santiago de Compostela | 6 | ||
| University of Southampton | 2 | ||
| University of Strathclyde | 3 | ||
| University of Szeged | 3 | ||
| University of Texas Rio Grande Valley | 22 | ||
| University of Tokyo | 6 | Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, | |
| University of the Balearic Islands | 9 | ||
| University of Washington | 2 | ||
| University of the West of Scotland | 4 | ||
| University of Western Australia | 21 | ||
| University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee | 27 | ||
| USC Information Sciences Institute | 3 | ||
| Washington State University | 3 | ||
| West Virginia University | 4 | ||
| Whitman College | 3 |