David A. Nichols

Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Virginia

Below are current and former group members and advisees. I do not anticipate having sufficient funding for a PhD student or postdoc during the upcoming application cycle, though I am happy to support applications for fellowships to work in my group. For UVA undergraduate students, I can guide unfunded undergraduate research projects (including PHYS 3995), such as the one described on the UVA SPS website, here.

Current Group Members

Postdoctoral Scholars

  • Sayantani Datta (UVA Rising Scholars webpage)
    UVA Rising Scholar Postdoctoral Fellow in Physics and group member since 09/2023; co-advised with Kent Yagi.
    Research Areas: Tests of general relativity, gravitational-wave memory

Graduate Students

  • Benjamin Wade (UVA Physics webpage)
    UVA PhD student in Physics and group member since 02/2021.
    Research Areas: Environmental effects in extreme- and intermediate-mass-ratio inspirals

  • Siddhant Siddhant (UVA Physics webpage)
    UVA PhD student in Physics and group member since 01/2022.
    Research Areas: Asymptotically flat spacetimes, gravitational-wave memory effects

  • Cuishan Liu (UVA Physics webpage)
    UVA PhD student in Physics and group member since 05/2023.
    Research Areas: Black-hole ringdown, gravitational-wave memory

Former Group Members and Advisees

Postdoctoral Scholars

  • Alexander Grant (Research webpage)
    UVA postdoc in Physics 09/2020–08/2023.
    Currently a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Southampton.

Graduate Students

  • Arwa Elhashash
    First UVA PhD student in Physics who I supervised, 08/2019–05/2025.
    Will start a postdoctoral fellowship in the fall of 2025.

  • Oliver Boersma
    MS in Astrophysics from Radboud University in 2019.
    Co-advised MS thesis (on memory-effect detection prospects) with Patricia Schmidt.
    Completed a PhD program in astronomy at the University of Amsterdam (NL) and currently working for the Rijkswaterstaat as a data scientist.

  • Andris Dorozsmai
    MS in Astrophysics from Radboud University in 2018.
    Helped with supervising MS thesis (on compact-object populations); primary supervisor was Gijs Nelemans.
    Currently a postdoc at NAOJ.

Postbaccalaureate Students

  • Leenie Wilcox
    Physics Bridge student, co-supervised with Kent Yagi, 09/2023–08/2024.
    Currently teaching high-school physics.

Undergraduate Students

  • Zachary Raney
    BS in Physics and Astronomy minor from UVA in 2025
    Undergraduate research project (PHYS 3995) on spacetime visualization methods 01/2025–05/2025.
    Currently working in industry.

  • Bejoy Sen
    BS in Physics and Computer Science from UVA in 2023
    Independent-study research project on spacetime curvature visualization 01/2022–05/2022.
    Currently working in industry.

  • Andrew Tuma
    BS in Physics from UVA in 2020.
    Undergraduate research project (PHYS 3995) on spacetime visualization methods 09/2019–05/2020.
    Completed a MS degree in Applied Mathematics at San Diego State University (SDSU); currently working in industry as a data scientist.

  • Yara Yousef
    BS in Astronomy-Physics from UVA in 2020.
    Undergraduate research project (PHYS 3995) on memory-effect detection prospects 09/2019–05/2020.
    Currently in a MS program in machine learning and articial intellegence at the University of Barcelona.