Gregory Ashton

I am a postdoc and assistant lecturer in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Monash University in Australia. I am interested in gravitational wave astrophysics and understanding neutron star interiors. I am a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration .
In 2016 I completed my PhD Timing variations in neutron stars: models, inference and their implications for gravitational waves at the University of Southampton under the joint supervision of Prof. David Ian Jones (UoS) and Dr. Reinhard Prix (Albert Einstein Institute, Hannover). I then worked as a postdoc in Hannover with Reinhard and others in the continuous gravitational waves group , before moving to Melbourne to work with Paul Lasky and others here at MoCa.

Education:

University of Southampton
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Astrophysics
2012 – 2016
Activities and Societies:
- Member of the LIGO collaboration
- PhD title: Timing variations in neutron stars: models, inference, and their implications for gravitational waves
- Developed novel Bayesian inference methods for understanding radio pulsars
- Developed searches for gravitational waves from mountains on neutron stars


University of Southampton
MPhys, Physics - First class (with hons.)
2008 – 2012


Experience:

Royal Holloway, University of London
Teaching Fellow (Science)
Full-time
Sep 2020 – Present

Monash University
Assistant Lecturer
Full-time
Jan 2018 – Sep 2020
- Supervised 1 PhD student (5 first author publications) and 5 undergraduate projects
- Co-chair of the 100+ member LIGO parameter-estimation group, responsible for characterising every observed merger.
- Lead developer of the bilby Bayesian inference library selected by the LIGO collaborations as the primary workhorse tool to analyse gravitational-wave observations from 2020.
- Scientific advisor for GWCloud, a bilby-backed cloud-based inference tool.
- Core contributor to LIGO science

Albert Einstein Institute, Hannove
Postdoctoral Researcher
Full-time
Aug 2016 – Jan 2018
- Lead developer of the PyFstat package
- Developed GPU-enhanced stochastic sampling algorithms
- Contributor to the petaFLOP-scale Einstein@Home search for gravitational waves from mountains on neutron stars.
- Member of the LIGO collaboration


Most Cited Publications:

Observation of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger
BP Abbott, R Abbott, TD Abbott, MR Abernathy, F Acernese, K Ackley, ...
Physical review letters 116 (6), 061102 2016

GW170817: observation of gravitational waves from a binary neutron star inspiral
BP Abbott, R Abbott, TD Abbott, F Acernese, K Ackley, C Adams, T Adams, ...
Physical Review Letters 119 (16), 161101 2017

GW151226: observation of gravitational waves from a 22-solar-mass binary black hole coalescence
BP Abbott, R Abbott, TD Abbott, MR Abernathy, F Acernese, K Ackley, ...
Physical review letters 116 (24), 241103 2016

GW170104: observation of a 50-solar-mass binary black hole coalescence at redshift 0.2
L Scientific, BP Abbott, R Abbott, TD Abbott, F Acernese, K Ackley, ...
Physical Review Letters 118 (22), 221101 2017

Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger
BP Abbott, S Bloemen, P Canizares, H Falcke, RP Fender, S Ghosh, ...
2017

Advanced ligo
J Aasi, BP Abbott, R Abbott, T Abbott, MR Abernathy, K Ackley, C Adams, ...
Classical and quantum gravity 32 (7), 074001 2015