About
Zachary Nasipak is a Senior Research Fellow based in the School of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Southampton. He works on theoretical and computational models of gravitational wave sources.
Email: Z.Nasipak@soton.ac.uk
Tel: +44 23 8059 2810
Zachary Nasipak is a Senior Research Fellow based in the School of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Southampton. He works on theoretical and computational models of gravitational wave sources.
Zachary models compact object binaries, such as merging pairs of black holes and neutron stars, and the unique gravitational signals that they emit. These signals, known as gravitational waves, can now be observed by ultra-precise detectors here on Earth and provide a new way of studying the universe. Zachary is particularly interested in using techniques from perturbation theory to study and simulate systems where one black hole is noticeably smaller than the other. Such systems will be important sources for future gravitational wave observatories, such as the space-based LISA detector, and can teach us about the formation of supermassive black holes, the dense stellar environments in galactic centres, and the nature of space and time.
Zachary has experience leading tutorials on Introductory Physics, Advanced Classical Mechanics, and Advanced Thermodynamics/Statistical Mechanics.
Zachary Nasipak joined the University of Southampton in Fall 2024. Prior to joining, Zachary obtained his PhD in gravitational physics in 2020 from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill under the supervision of Charles R. Evans. He then served as a semester-long Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM) at Brown University, where he participated in the “Advances in Computational Relativity” Fall 2020 program. In 2021, he was awarded a three-year NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship, which was carried out at the Goddard Space Flight Center. During his time at Goddard, he modelled sources for the future space-based LISA gravitational wave detector and explored the potential of prospective next-generation observatories. He continued this research at NASA Goddard through a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Maryland Baltimore County in the spring and summer of 2024 before joining Southampton.