Keith Riles

Keith Riles
Born	United States
Education	University of California, Berkeley Stanford University
Scientific career
Institutions	University of Michigan

Keith Riles is the H. Richard Crane Collegiate Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan. He is a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration which in 2015 discovered gravitational waves. His research includes cosmology and particle physics. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the International Astronomical Union.

Career

Keith Riles was born in Starkville, Mississippi in 1960, and grew up in New Orleans and Redondo Beach.

He earned his B.A. in physics from University of California, Berkeley in 1982, and his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1989. His PhD advisor was Martin Lewis Perl.

He worked as a postdoc at the University of California, Riverside from 1989 to 1991, then joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1992. He attained his collegiate professorship in 2018.

Research

Dr. Riles's work includes both gravitational waves and elementary particle physics.

His work in particle physics was primarily on the L3 experiment at CERN, studying the W and Z bosons. He also used Large Electron-Positron Collider data to study the properties of tau leptons, B mesons, and W and Z bosons.

He leads the Michigan Gravitational Wave Group, which has used data from LIGO to search for gravitational waves from neutron stars, and currently has placed an upper limit on gravitational ripples from such neutron stars at better than one part in one trillion trillion (10^(-24)). Searches are now underway for isolated and binary neutron stars using algorithms developed by the University of Michigan group.

Public Lectures

Riles has given a number of public lectures on topics related to his research, including a series entitled, “Rapidly Spinning Neutron Stars and Emission Mechanisms” for the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, “Gravitational Wave Astronomy” for The Secrets of the Universe, and “Gravitational Waves—Einstein's Audacious Prediction” for Saturday Morning Physics

Select Publications

Multi-Messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger, Astrophys. J. Lett. 848, L12 (2017).

All-sky Search for Periodic Gravitational Waves in the O1 LIGO Data, B. Abbott et al., Phys. Rev. D96, 062002 (2017).

Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 061102 (2016).

First all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves from unknown sources in binary systems, Phys Rev. D 90, 06201 (2014).

Gravitational Waves: Sources, Detectors and Searches (K. Riles), Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 68, 1 (2013).

All-Sky Search for Periodic Gravitational Waves in the Full S5 LIGO Data (J. Abadie et al), Phys. Rev. D 85, 022001 (2012).

An All-Sky Search Algorithm for Continuous Gravitational Waves from Spinning Neutron Stars in Binary Systems (E. Goetz and K. Riles), Class. Quant. Grav. 28, 215006 (2011).

Position on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in Higher Education

Riles has argued against affirmative action and DEI in higher education, including in the natural sciences. At the December 2024 Board of Regents Meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Riles recommended dismantling nearly all of the University of Michigan's longstanding DEI programs, suggesting that DEI was simply a repackaged form of affirmative action. "DEI," he said, "is a particularly toxic form of affirmative action because of its relentless focus on grievance ideology. The effects were especially pernicious in 2020 during the George Floyd hysteria and the BLM grift. But the toxicity continues even now in the form of anti-racism. Oddly enough, though, I do agree that we are plagued by systemic--that is, institutionalized racism and sexism. It's called 'DEI'. It is the only systemic racism that has persisted at this university or for that matter throughout most of American society."