Dennis Ugolini is an accomplished physics professor who has spent a great deal of his career working with LIGO, the project that revolutionized our understanding of the Universe through the discovery of gravitational waves. In this mind-bending talk, he discusses the challenges presented in LIGO's journey, and the role his work played in overcoming them. Dennis Ugolini has been a member of the Department of Physics and Astronomy faculty since 2003. He teaches a wide variety of introductory and upper-division laboratory and lecture courses, as well as a first-year seminar on pseudoscience and critical thinking.

His research centers on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), a pair of 4-kilometer-long detectors in Washington and Louisiana, designed to measure changes in the curvature of space due to the motion of astronomical objects like black holes and neutron stars. Through funding from the National Science Foundation, Ugolini and ten former and current students have worked on improving the sensitivity of the interferometers, helping them see farther out into the universe. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx