Simon Barke was born in Germany where he studied physics. For a while, he lived in Moshi, Tanzania, and worked at different local schools and universities. Over the last decade, he has had the privilege to be involved in a number of exciting projects. He was a scientific monitor at the LIGO gravitational wave detector in Livingston, Louisiana. He got his PhD for research on low-frequency gravitational wave observatories in space at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Hannover, Germany, with a focus on inter-spacecraft frequency distribution for LISA, the upcoming Laser Interferometer Space Antenna by the European Space Agency. He then moved to the University of Florida where he conducted research at the Department of Physics on the detection mechanism for ALPS, a dark matter generator and detector that is under construction at the German Electron Synchrotron DESY (Hamburg, Germany). Currently Simon works at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering on the development of a LISA Charge Management device under NASA contract.

He also tried to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, plays online games, and cannot sing (at all).

Education

Doctor rerum naturalium (physics)

Teaching Interests

Limiting fundamental and technical noise sources for ground and space-based gravitational wave observatories

Research Interests

Ultra-low-frequency noise of custom and COTS devices (electronics, electro-optics, lasers), flight hardware development for space missions, mission concepts for future gravitational wave observatories