Alan Weinstein

Professor Alan Weinstein is a Professor of Physics in the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He earned an A.B. in Physics from Harvard University in 1978 and a Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University in 1983. After completing his doctorate, Weinstein held a postdoctoral research fellowship at Harvard University in 1983 and at the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz, from 1983 to 1988. He joined Caltech as Assistant Professor of Physics in 1988, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1995, and to Professor in 1999, a position he continues to hold. From 2020 to 2023, he served as Executive Officer. Earlier in his career, from 1980 to 2000, Weinstein conducted experimental particle physics research at SLAC, SCIPP, Cornell, and CERN, focusing on heavy quarks, the tau lepton, Z0 boson properties, Higgs searches, and detector technologies. From 2000 to 2004, he explored observational cosmology with the SNAP space telescope proposal.

Weinstein's main research specialization lies in gravitational wave physics and astrophysics as part of the LIGO Laboratory. Since 1998, he has led efforts including the 40-meter laser interferometer prototype at Caltech from 1998 to 2005, which tested Advanced LIGO technologies. He leads the LIGO Caltech Astrophysical Data Analysis Group, co-chaired the LIGO Scientific Collaboration's Compact Binary Coalescence working group from 2007 to 2012, and directs the LIGO Open Science Center and LIGO Laboratory SURF REU program. His group advances gravitational wave searches from binary mergers, core-collapse supernovae, spinning neutron stars, and primordial sources; performs General Relativity tests; and pursues multi-messenger astronomy. Weinstein contributed significantly to LIGO's first gravitational wave detections in 2015, enabling studies of black hole populations and binary properties. Key publications include "GW150914: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger" (Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 061102, 2016), "Properties of the Binary Black Hole Merger GW150914" (Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 241102, 2016), and "GW170104: Observation of a 50-Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence at Redshift 0.2" (Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 221101, 2017). His honors include American Physical Society Fellowship (Division of Gravitational Physics, 2015), Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (shared with LIGO team, 2016), Gruber Cosmology Prize (shared, 2016), and Einstein Prize (shared, 2017).