Time flies. It's approaching the end of the third year of my Ph.D program. In the past year, the secondment, thesis preparation, and some other works made me do not have so much time to be out of the office.
In April, after some discussions, I got an opportunity to go to Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Hannover to fulfill my secondment. I stayed there for three months which from the beginning of May to the beginning of the August. It was a joyful and fruitful in those three months. During those three months, I investigated the matter effects on the binary neutron star search in the advanced LIGO first observing run. And we achieved a novel tidal template bank to explore the improvement of the binary neutron star search. The result was shown by a poster during the LIGO-Virgo meeting at CERN, Switzerland in August 2017. Hopefully, it could be useful to the further binary neutron star search.
Since I am targeting to accomplish my Ph.D program on time, as my school, Gran Sasso Science Institute required, I submitted my thesis in the middle of August in this year. I reported three of my works in my thesis. The first one is the new template bank for binary neutron stars search which I achieved during the secondment. The second one is a GW + EM multi-messenger simulation I developed to investigate the possible scenarios for the future binary neutron stars detections from gravitational wave and Gamma-ray/X-ray radiation. And the third one is a study for the orbit optimization and time delay interferometry simulation for new LISA and LISA-like space missions. Now my thesis is under review. In this meanwhile, I need to polish my thesis writing. Hopefully, my thesis could be accepted by the referees.
Besides the secondment and thesis, there are some other works and training I was involved in. During the advanced LIGO's second observing run from November 2016 to August 2017, I was recruited as an EM follow-up advocate to promptly respond to the triggers generated by the gravitational wave detectors with others three advocates. I was on duty for four weeks during the run. It was a nervous and exciting experience since we need to very cautiously check the information of a GW trigger and send it to the EM telescope partners. On the other hand, it was so exhilarating because we are the earliest group people who could receive the new GW triggers notifications, and a significant trigger could be a genuine gravitational wave detection.
Succeeding the first GraWIToN data analysis training school, I attended the second data analysis training in Roma during October 24th-28th, 2016. That school focused on the continuous gravitational wave and stochastic background gravitational wave data analysis. Moreover, during November 21st-25th, 2016, I also attended the Project Management and Communication training school at EGO which focused on the project management skills. In September 2017, I participated in the Einstein Telescope Design Update Workshop which was hosted by University of Glasgow. I reported my thesis status during the final GraWIToN evaluation. It was joyful to met other GraWIToN colleagues again in Glasgow. However, it should be also the last occasion to meet others together. Good luck to everyone and wish the promising career to everybody.