It was quite beneficial for me in the past 10 months to study gravitational waves. Advanced LIGO started to run in September 2015 and during the first running I was in shifts to monitor an online data analysis pipeline—MBTA; from this work I knew how our online data analysis pipeline works. In parallel, I did a comparison investigation about performances of different template banks for online data analysis pipeline, which could be useful for us in order to understand the search efficiency. After the first gravitational wave signal was detected from binary black holes, which happened on September 14th, 2015, there were lots of discussions happened in our collaboration in the following 5 months. Those discussions were so interesting and enlightening which provided a golden opportunity to me to understand our experiment and grasp our study. It’s was so impressive to realise and comprehend how gravitational wave, the new window onto our universe, will deeply improve our understanding of our universe. Also, it was my great honour to be a member of our collaboration to witness this unprecedented discovery. This precious experience strengthened my conviction and stimulated me to delve into this study.

On February 11th, 2016, we rejoiced in the announcement of our first gravitational wave detection. It was a so exciting historical moment for us. As a big breakthrough after I00 years of the General Relativity, that news was spreading all over the world so quickly. It inevitably drew widespread interest in China. Chinese Science Bulletin, an influential journal which introduces the new science development to public in China, invited young Chinese researchers who involved in the LIGO scientific collaboration and Virgo collaboration to write an outreaching paper to disseminate this big discovery and relevant studies with more technical details. The article was asked to base on the first gravitational wave detection, introduce the status and approaches of gravitational waves detection in different frequency bands. I joined that collaborated paper and undertook the section of GW detection in space which connects to my master thesis. Additionally, I reviewed the other sections which connected to my current study. That paper is featured as an editors’ suggestion and highlighted as the cover article in that issue.

Gravitational wave detection is so interesting subject to me, and I was eager to know the developments in this field. Conferences, workshops and training schools are good occasions for me to grasp them. In last July, I went to Rome for 14th Marcel Grossmann Meeting which should be one of the biggest astrophysics meetings in Europe. I also attended the CBC f2f discussion in Hannover in the same month. In November, from 9th-13th, I went back to Gran Sasso Science Institute to participate the 2nd GraWIToN school which was also the 1st data analysis GraWIToN school. The lectures were focused on the data analysis of gravitational waves and multi-messenger which directly connected to my study.

In April, after some discussion, I decided to work on the multi-messenger data analysis, especially focused on the EM follow-up part. My following studies will include simulating the scenarios of the EM follow-up observation for the gravitational wave events, investigating the statistics of the joint EM/GW observations in various energies (from gamma rays to optical), and strategies of coordinating telescopes for the follow-up observation basing on their individual features. In the past month, I have reproduced some basic simulations as a practice which investigated the detection rates of the binary neutron star coalescence using the coming detectors configuration. I will develop the simulation for other kinds of binary system detection in the following work.

Since I moved to Pisa in last October, I have been in INFN Pisa section for more than 7 months. Now I am enjoying my life here. As a famous culture town with long history, Pisa attracted lots of students from different countries which provided my insight into different cultures. In our institute, there are lots of outstanding researchers and students. Their passion for science and friendship in life are inspiring me to keep moving forward.