Kelly Holley-Bockelmann

Director

I work on galaxy dynamics, gravitational waves, and black holes of all kinds. I am completely geeked by the upcoming Laser Interferometer Space Antenna mission, which will be able to detect merging massive black holes out to the Cosmic Dawn as well as the hum of millions of binary stellar remnants in our own Galaxy orbiting around one another on timescales of about a minute. Plus things we haven’t even thought of yet! Merging black holes, lasers in space, and ripples in spacetime — I have the coolest job.

I love EMIT because I want to help build multi-messenger astronomy into a welcoming, vibrant field — the kind of field I would feel proud to work in. My life is filled with a husband, two kids, 3 cats, 3 frogs, and a very stingy cherry tree. In my free time, I like reading and gardening. I also like doing the following things even though I’m kinda terrible at them: trivia, ping pong, biking, baking, singing loudly, and dancing. My dream is to someday do one of those hanging pull-up things and to get the EMIT team to do karaoke.