Searching for gravitational waves from spinning neutron stars with LIGO

The detection of gravitational waves (GWs) from two inspiralling black holes put LIGO in the news, and marked the beginning of a new era of GW astronomy. But there's more to GW detection than meets the eye– or the headlines! In this talk, I'll give some background on GWs, the LIGO detectors, and different types of GW searches, before zooming in on the focus of the Michigan GW group: the search for GWs from spinning neutron stars.