Dennis Coyne

Biography

Dennis Coyne is the Chief Engineer for the LIGO Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California. Over the last 24 years, he has led the LIGO engineering team’s efforts in design and implementation of first and second-generation instruments. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) is a first of its kind instrument, capable of measuring the sub-atomic stretching of space due to cataclysmic cosmological events. The LIGO founders were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017 for the direct detection of gravitational waves which were predicted by Albert Einstein. LIGO is now an operating observatory enabling multi-messenger astronomy. Prior to joining Caltech, Dennis worked for Kaman Sciences Corp. and Bell Laboratories. Dennis received a BSME from UMass and an MSME from UC Berkeley. He is a fellow of the ASME, a fellow of the APS, recipient of the 2018 AAS Lancelot M. Berkeley Prize, OSA’s 2016 Forman Team Engineering Excellence Award and the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics. More information is available at https://labcit.ligo.caltech.edu/~coyne/