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Lia Medeiros
Probing Gravitational Physics with Event Horizon Telescope and Gravitational Wave Observations of Black Holes
Research Interests:
I am a member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, which published the first image of a black hole in April of 2019. To understand how variability in the source emission affects the image we reconstruct, I have used general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) plus ray tracing simulations of the environment around the central black hole. These simulations form a training set for an image reconstruction and model fitting algorithm that tests our current understanding of accretion physics. I am currently a co-coordinator of the Gravitational Physics Inputs Working Group within the EHT and have worked on, for example, simulating what a black hole that was perturbed away from our expectations might look like and comparing these simulations to EHT observations.
Education and Outreach Interests:
I am partnering with the Princeton Children's Fund (PCF), a non-profit organization that focuses on closing the achievement gap for low income students, to run an after school program and a summer program to teach middle school students astronomy and basic programming. The curriculum I develop for these programs will be freely available on my website.