Dr. Frank Ohme

Grown up in the picturesque part of Germany called Thüringen, I studied Physics at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and was one of the last lucky students to receive a German diploma in 2008. (Now they all become Bachelors and Masters.)

Having enjoyed my first experiences in gravitational-wave data analysis with Prof. Schmeißer, and a one-year diploma project in the Numerical Relativity group of Prof. Brügmann, I moved on to the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, also known as the Albert Einstein Institute, where I spent three and a half wonderful years (2009 - 2012) working on the interface of numerical relativity and gravitational-wave data analysis. My thesis was titled "Bridging the Gap between Post-Newtonian Theory and Numerical Relativity in Gravitational-Wave Data Analysis", supervised by Bernard Schutz and Badri Krishnan.

After a few months as a post doc at the other Albert Einstein Institute, this time in Hannover, I moved to Cardiff in September 2012, where I was a post-doctoral researcher under Stephen Fairhurst and later an ERC-funded Research Fellow under Mark Hannam. 

My time in Cardiff had a great influence on me as I scientist, and it also saw the (gravitational-wave) world changing on September 14, 2015. I was part of the international team of scientists that discovered and interpreted the first direct gravitational-wave observation of a black-hole binary. My small role in this gigantic endeavour was to help understanding what the signal we observed told us about the black holes it originated from. And it told us a lot!

Since November 2016 I have the honour to lead my own Max Planck Independent Research Group here in Hannover.