David A. Nichols

Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Virginia

Currently, I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville. My appointment began at the end of July of 2019 and my profile on the UVA Physics Department’s webpage can be accessed here.

From July 2018 to July 2019, I was a senior postdoctoral researcher in the Gravitation Astroparticle Physics Amsterdam (GRAPPA) institute at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) in The Netherlands. I was part of the gravitational-waves research group there, which is being led by Associate Prof. Samaya Nissanke.

From September 2016 to June 2018, I was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astrophysics at Radboud University (RU) in Nijmegen in The Netherlands. The Department of Astrophysics is part of the larger Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics, and Particle Physics (IMAPP) at Radboud. My research adviser there was also Associate Prof. Samaya Nissanke.

Before moving to The Netherlands, I was a postdoctoral research associate working in the research group of Prof. Eanna E. Flanagan at Cornell University. I worked in the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science (CCAPS), which is affiliated with the Department of Astronomy. I held my position at Cornell between September 2012 and August 2016.

Prior to my postdoc at Cornell, I worked on my Ph.D. in the theoretical astrophysics group (TAPIR) at Caltech. My doctoral advisor was Prof. Yanbei Chen, and I also worked closely with Emeritus Prof. Kip S. Thorne. I graduated in June 2012, and I spent the summer as a postdoc finishing up some remaining projects from my Ph.D.

My undergraduate studies took place at Claremont McKenna College (CMC), where I majored in both mathematics and physics. My senior thesis research was in the field of mathematical biology, and it was guided by Prof. John Milton. I graduated in June 2006.