Bio – Lisa V. Drummond

I am currently a postdoc fellow at Caltech working on a broad range of topics in gravitational and high energy astrophysics. These include modeling gravitational wave signals from extreme mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs), uncovering black hole properties through X-ray observations of quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs), and probing neutron star physics with radio pulsar data.

I completed my PhD at MIT in 2024. During my PhD, I used perturbation theory to study black hole binary systems with extreme mass ratios and the gravitational waves they produce; gravitational waves from these systems will be detectable by future space-based gravitational wave detector LISA. In particular, I have focused on modelling the contribution of the smaller black hole’s spin to the gravitational wave signal.

I completed my Master of Science at the University of Melbourne where I studied the interaction of the different topological defects (neutron vortices and proton flux tubes) that thread the quantum fluids inside of a neutron star.

**A glassy system of neutron vortices coupled to a proton flux tube array titled relative to the rotation axis, evolving in imaginary time.** *(Top)* Cross-sections of neutron density through z=0. *(Bottom)* Three-dimensional surface plots of neutron density where the red shading traces out vortices.