Institute for Gravitational Research

The first build-a-detector workshop was held from May 31st to June 11th, and welcomed Masters and PhD students from different institutions across India, including IISER TVM, IISER Berhampur, IIT Bombay, TIFR Hyderabad and IUCAA. The workshop lasted 10 days and was held online. The first 6 days were a mix of pre-recorded lectures and live Q&A sessions given by internationally recognized speakers, experts in their fields, in the gravitational wave community. The mix of pre-recorded and live sessions gave students time and flexibility to go through the lectures and then formulate questions to be discussed/answered the following day. This format also provided a convenient way to deal with the time difference between the various speakers and the students attending the workshop. The students then spent 3 days working in groups to conceptually design a gravitational wave detector and produce a budget noise curve as well as determine the astrophysical sources they hope to observe. The students then presented their proposals to an international panel of gravitational wave experts by submitting a 5-10 min presentation alongside a written proposal. The members of the winning team were awarded M10 Lenovo tablets and all the students will be given a shirt as a memento from the workshop, all funded by Newton-Bhabha UKRI. With strongly positive feedback from the students, including stating, “Very exciting and we learned a lot from these workshop. Looking forward to more workshops like this.”, “It was a great experience!!”, and, “it definitely left a mark on my career as a future scientist.” and full consensus from students looking forward to future workshops, our plan is to continue organizing and supporting similar workshops from the Newton-Bhabha UK team, alongside our international network of collaborators.