Deirdre Shoemaker

Deirdre received her B.S. in Physics, Astronomy, and Astrophysics from the Pennsylvania State University and her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Penn State and Cornell University before joining the faculty at Penn State in 2004. She moved to the School of Physics at Georgia Tech in 2008 and to the Department of Physics at UT in 2020. She has won the NSF CAREER award and was part of the Breakthrough Prize given to the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. She has served on the Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Council, is a fellow of the American Physical Society, has held several elected roles in APS DGRAV and was instrumental in the formation of the LISA Consortium.

A physicist specializing in numerical relativity and gravitational wave astrophysics, Deirdre Shoemaker focuses on solving Einstein's equations to unveil the dynamics of black hole mergers and to predict their emitted gravitational waves. She contributes to gravitational wave observatories like LIGO, Cosmic Explorer and LISA. Passionate about exploring how gravity reveals its role in the Universe and mentoring the next generation of physicists, Shoemaker is a member of the LISA Science Team.