Making Waves at the 2026 LVK Meeting in Pisa

From March 9th to 13th, Juno Chan, Jose María Ezquiaga, Rico Ka Lok Lo, Simon Maenaut, and Lorena Magaña Zertuche participated in the 2026 LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) meeting in Pisa, Italy. The meeting featured focused discussion sessions for each working group, as well as plenary talks on the status of each detector.

The group presented three posters, which garnered much interest from colleagues. Rico K.L. Lo showcased his work on "simulating duty cycles of a GW detector network." Lorena Magaña Zertuche presented DINGO-lensing, a deep learning approach to identify and characterize distorted GWs by lensing, based on the group’s recent publication. Jose María Ezquiaga’s poster used DINGO-lensing on the strongest lensing candidate to date, assessing whether GW231123 was lensed, also based on one of the group’s recent work.

Apart from exploring the city and going on lunchtime hikes, the group had the opportunity to tour the Virgo detector located in Cascina (pictured above). Here, they learnt more about the incredible technology that makes GW detections possible.

March 31, 2026, 8:47 p.m.