GWSky is an ERC Synergy Grant that unites four nodes — SISSA, the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (AEI) in Potsdam, UCLA, and the Niels Bohr Institute — to build the theoretical framework and analysis tools needed for the coming flood of gravitational-wave observations. This site is the SISSA node.
Grant
ERC Synergy Grant 101167314
Duration
1 April 2025 – 31 March 2031
Total budget
€11.98 million
SISSA node
€2.8 million to SISSA
SISSA’s role on GWSky is to study the effect of the astrophysical environment on gravitational waves, explore alternatives to general relativity, and work out what those ideas mean for statistical analysis of detector data — with classical methods and machine learning. The other three nodes bring waveform modelling, QFT methods, and strong-field dynamics.
How gas, dark matter, and galactic structure leave fingerprints on gravitational-wave signals.
Vacuum waveforms assume isolated binaries. Real sources live in accretion disks, dark-matter spikes, and stellar clusters. The SISSA node develops self-consistency tests for extreme mass-ratio inspirals, maps environmental imprints on LISA’s stochastic background from stellar-mass binaries, and asks when those imprints can be mistaken for modified gravity.
Using black holes and compact binaries as laboratories for new fundamental fields.
GWSky treats next-generation detectors as precision experiments. At SISSA this includes scalar-tensor and Einstein-scalar-Gauss-Bonnet dynamics, Einstein-aether constraints from binary pulsars, and numerical-relativity studies of scalar emission from neutron-star binaries with kinetic screening.
Classical and AI methods for the flood of LISA, ET, and LVK data.
The node builds simulation-based inference for LISA Galactic binaries, global-fit strategies for massive black hole binaries, and ringdown analyses that fold in sky-localization uncertainty. The goal is a statistical pipeline that can keep up with the event rates of Cosmic Explorer, the Einstein Telescope, and LISA.
LISA, pulsar timing arrays, and Gaia astrometry as one gravitational-wave sky.
Massive black hole binaries and stochastic backgrounds are visible across millihertz and nanohertz bands. SISSA work cross-correlates Gaia astrometry with pulsar timing arrays, contributes to LISA massive-black-hole catalogues, and uses PTA data to search for gravitational-wave memory.
SISSA (this site)
PI Enrico Barausse · Trieste, Italy
Albert Einstein Institute
PI Alessandra Buonanno · Potsdam, Germany
UCLA
PI Zvi Bern · Los Angeles, USA
Niels Bohr Institute
PI Maarten van de Meent · Copenhagen, Denmark
Consortium website: gwsky.org. Full directory: gwsky.org/people. SISSA profiles live on this site’s people page.