Dr. Pablo Laguna

Biography

Pablo Laguna is a computational astrophysicist with a focus on investigating astrophysical phenomena involving binary systems of black holes and neutron stars. He received his bachelor's degree in physics in 1981 from Universidad Autonoma Metropolitan Iztapalapa in Mexico City, followed by a doctoral degree in physics in 1987 from the University of Texas at Austin. He began his career as a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Relativity at the University of Texas at Austin from 1987 to 1989, before taking a position as a visiting assistant professor at Drexel University in 1989. He continued his postdoctoral work at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1990 to 1992. In 1992, Laguna joined the faculty of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State University as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 1998 and professor in 2000. In 2001, he became the associate director of the Center for Gravitational Wave Physics. After a tenure at Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was a founding member and director of the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, he returned to the University of Texas at Austin in 2020. In 2021, he was appointed chair of the Department of Physics. Laguna's research significantly contributes to the field of gravitational wave astronomy by solving Einstein's equations of General Relativity to study the mergers of black holes and neutron stars, as well as tidal disruptions by massive black holes.

Research Interests

Experience

Awards