Portrait of Paul Lasky

Currently: Visiting Professor at UBC

Vancouver · Jul 2026 – Jan 2027

Paul Lasky

Professor, School of Physics and Astronomy
Monash University · Melbourne, Australia

I’m a gravitational-wave astrophysicist. I use ripples in spacetime — from colliding black holes and neutron stars — to study the most extreme physics in the Universe: how matter behaves at nuclear densities, how black holes form and pair up, and whether Einstein’s general relativity holds in the strong-field regime. I'm the Deputy Chair of the Board of Astronomy Australia Limited, and I’m Monash node leader in OzGrav, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery.

Research themes Play with gravitational waves

Simulated binary

h(t), illustrative

01News

Latest News

Talks, papers and milestones, most recent first.

All news
  1. New paper

    Panther, Lasky & Sarin, Multimessenger astrophysics drives the case for an Australian Gravitational-Wave observatory. Submitted to PASA. arXiv:2611.04150

  2. Award

    I'm very grateful to have received the Faculty of Science Excellence in Postgraduate Research Supervision award. This one really belongs to the wonderful graduate students I've had the privilege of working with over the years. Thank you all for your curiosity, hard work and good humour, and for making supervision such a rewarding part of the job. A huge thank you also to Eric Thrane, who has co-supervised so many of these students with me.

  3. Group

    We're hiring!!! Eric Thrane and I are advertising two, three-year postdoctoral Research Fellow positions at Monash University as part of OzGrav, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery. This is a fantastic time to join the field, and the positions are wide open across gravitational-wave astronomy, from LIGO and pulsar-timing-array data analysis, to the astrophysics of black holes and neutron stars, to testing Einstein's general relativity. Check out the full advertisement here. Applications close on Sunday 22 November 2026 (11.55pm AEDT), and please feel free to get in touch with any questions.

  4. New paper

    Passenger (group member), Guttman (group member), Lasky & Thrane, How general relativity stacks up: Testing gravity by coherently combining gravitational-wave observations. Submitted to PRD. arXiv:2610.29247

  5. New paper

    Cross-Parkin, Magaña Hernandez, Palmese, Lasky & Thrane, Hostbusters: constraining H₀ and binary formation channels through gravitational-wave host galaxy associations. Submitted to ApJ. arXiv:2610.25866

  6. New paper

    Lasky, Clevinger, da Silva, Farias & Dexheimer, The presence and order of QCD phase transitions from gravitational-wave observations of neutron star mergers. Submitted to MNRAS. arXiv:2610.27287

  7. Accepted

    Pinchbeck, Thrane, Balazs & Lasky, BilbyFlow: user-friendly neural posterior estimation for gravitational-wave astronomy. Accepted to ApJS. arXiv:2609.00766

  8. Accepted

    Cheung (group member), Udall, Davis, Lasky & Thrane, Joint inference for gravitational-wave signal and noise glitch: Method and application. Accepted to PRD. arXiv:2607.09111

  9. Event

    This week I'm visiting CITA at the University of Toronto, Canada.

  10. Published

    Curyło, Thrane, Lasky & Gaynor, A Comprehensive Framework for Phase-coherent Mapping of the Gravitational-wave Sky with Pulsar Timing Arrays. Published in ApJ 1009, 166. arXiv:2604.19073

02Research

Using ripples in spacetime to study extreme physics

All research
01

Bayesian inference

Turning noisy detector data into astrophysics: Bayesian inference, model selection, transdimensional inference, and neural posterior estimation.

02

Black-hole populations

What gravitational-wave catalogues reveal about how binary black holes form, including distinct subpopulations at different masses.

03

Neutron stars & dense matter

Post-merger signals, equations of state, magnetars behind short gamma-ray bursts, and continuous waves from spinning neutron stars.

04

Gravitational-wave memory

The permanent deformation of spacetime left behind by a passing wave, and how LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA can detect it.

05

Testing general relativity

Probing Einstein’s theory in the strong-field regime, from tests of the no-hair theorem to extra polarisations and modified gravity.

06

Pulsar timing arrays

Nanohertz gravitational waves from supermassive black-hole binaries, and phase-coherent maps of the gravitational-wave sky.

03Explore

Don’t just read about gravitational waves. Play with them.

Small interactive toys for students, the curious public and colleagues.

Interactive · sound

Hear a chirp

Pick two masses and listen to the gravitational-wave signal they’d make as they merge.

Interactive · inference

Be Bilby

There’s a signal hidden in this noise. Tune the parameters until the model fits, and watch the likelihood respond.

Interactive · tour

The gravitational-wave spectrum

From the cosmic microwave background to LIGO: more than twenty decades of frequency, and what lives at each.

04Publications

Recent papers

All publications
  1. 2026
  2. 2026

    How general relativity stacks up: Testing gravity by coherently combining gravitational-wave observations

    Passenger (group member), Guttman (group member), Lasky & Thrane

  3. 2026
  4. 2026
  5. 2026

Current group member

All publications

05Group

The people

Current postdocs and students, plus 26 alumni now in positions around the world.

Meet the group