Gray, Corey
Oral history interview with Corey Gray, 2020 November 2
In this interview, Corey Gray, Senior Operations Specialist at the LIGO Hanford Observatory, describes daily administrative and research life at the Observatory, and he recounts his familys Siksika/Blackfoot heritage on his mothers side and his Mormon heritage on his fathers side. He recounts his childhood in Southern California and how he navigated his Native American identity throughout his education from public schools through Humboldt State, where he majored in physics. Gray describes the opportunities after college leading to his employment with LIGO at Caltech, he explains working at LIGO before and after the detection of gravitational waves, he describes those momentous days in September 2015 when the detection was confirmed when he was Lead Operator. He explains some of the technical challenges in developing and maintaining the LIGO detectors, and he emphasizes the importance of the work environment being friendly and inclusive. Gray credits LIGOs founders and Nobel Prize winners for making everyone feel included in this recognition, and he describes how his mother became involved in his developing interests in becoming a science communicator to the public, and in particular to Indigenous groups. He describes his long term goals to bring more Indigenous students into science and he explains the development of the Society of Indigenous Physicists, and at the end of the interview, Gray conveys his optimism both for LIGO and for the continuing value of his outreach efforts.
Corey Gray is the Senior Operations Specialist at the LIGO Hanford Observatory.
California Institute of Technology
Humboldt State College
LIGO (Observatory)
Gravitational waves.
Science -- Study and teaching
Siksika Indians
Interviews. aat
Oral histories. aat
Transcripts. aat
Zierler, David, 1979- interviewer.
AIP-ICOS
American Institute of Physics. Niels Bohr Library & Archives. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, USA