Matthew Evans
Research Interests
Gravitational-wave detector instrument science, including quantum optics and low-noise materials for precision optical metrology.
Biographical Sketch
Prof. Evans received a B.S. in Physics from Harvey Mudd College in 1996 and a Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology in 2002. He worked on LIGO and Virgo until 2007, at which point he came to MIT as a research scientist working on Advanced LIGO design. Prof. Evans moved to his current position at MIT in January 2013, at which point his research group began work on new technologies to improved Advanced LIGO sensitivity. He currently leads the US effort to develop a next-generation gravitational-wave detector known as Cosmic Explorer.
More info:
School of Science appoints 12 faculty members to named professorships
Those selected for these positions receive additional support to pursue their research and develop their careers.
Awards & Honors
- 2019 // New Horizons in Physics Prize (with Dr. Lisa Barsotti and Prof. Rana Adhikari) "for research on present and future ground-based detectors of gravitational waves."
- 2019 // Appointed MathWorks Professor of Physics
- 2019 // American Physical Society Fellow "for critical contributions to development of advanced gravitational-wave detectors as well as for developing techniques to enable further improvements in detector sensitivity and for leading community efforts to design future large-scale ground-based detectors."
- 2016 // Special Breakthrough Prize (awarded to LIGO Scientific Collaboration)
- 2016 // Gruber Cosmology Prize (awarded to The LIGO Discovery Team) "for the first detection of gravitational waves."