Geoffrey Mo

About me

I’m a PhD candidate in the LIGO Lab at MIT and at the MKI Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, where I work with Erik Katsavounidis on multi-messenger astrophysics. Previously, I was an undergraduate at Carleton College.

I’m interested in gravitational waves, compact binaries, multi-messenger astronomy, and how we can use both gravity and light to learn about the universe. Recently, I’ve been thinking about searching for compact binaries in time-domain surveys, both as long-lived periodic sources and as transients. I’m also involved with using TESS and WINTER to look for electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational waves and other explosive phenomena.

If you’d like to chat, feel free to email me at gmo@mit.edu!

Research interests

• Multi-messenger astrophysics: electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational waves, sky localization of gravitational waves, gravitational waves from unusual sources
• Compact binaries: periodicity searches, ultracompact binaries, binary progenitors, compact binaries in globular clusters
• All-sky surveys: WINTER, TESS, ZTF, NEOWISE
• LIGO: low-latency infrastructure, gwcelery, detector characterization

Service

I am passionate about making physics and astrophysics more inclusive, and have been involved in efforts to make meaningful changes in my department and beyond.

• Admissions for the MIT Summer Research Program, targeted at recruiting underrepresented undergradutes to spend a summer conducting research at MIT (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024)
• Mentor for MIT PhysGAAP, a program to help prospective graduate students with their applications to help foster a diverse graduate student body (2023)
• MIT Kavli Institute coffee czar (2022 - present)
• Faculty search committee, MIT Astrophysics (2021)
• MIT Kavli Institute Anti-Racism Task Force (2020)
• Various roles at Carleton, including being a Student Departmental Advisor and serving on the Departmental Curriculum Committee (2017-2019)

Teaching

I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to teach and mentor students at MIT and at Carleton.

MIT

• TA for 8.021 E&M (Fall 2020, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024)
• Graduate student mentor for three undergraduate researchers (2020-2022)

Carleton

• Undergraduate TA and lab assistant for E&M, Contemporary Physics Lab, and Intro to Astronomy (2017-2019)
• Department-appointed tutor for E&M

Publications

I’ve included below papers for which I’ve made direct contributions. As a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration since 2018, I am also an author on LSC collaboration papers.

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