Evdokia Koursoumpa

Evdokia Koursoumpa is an MSc Student in the School of Physics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh), Greece, specializing in Gravitational Wave (GW) Astronomy and High Energy Physics. Her current academic work and research are situated within the realm of large-scale international physics collaborations. Crucially, Ms. Koursoumpa is a contributing member of the Virgo Collaboration, the European collaboration that operates the Virgo Interferometer, a major ground-based gravitational wave detector located near Pisa, Italy. Her involvement places her at the forefront of efforts to detect and analyze the signals produced by cosmic events such as the mergers of black holes and neutron stars, working alongside her peers in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) and KAGRA. Ms. Koursoumpa has gained valuable hands-on experience through a European Mobility (Erasmus) Internship completed at the Virgo site. This practical experience involved working directly with the sophisticated hardware and data acquisition systems required for GW detection. Her work contributes to the continuous process of instrument calibration and data quality assessment, which are essential for ensuring the reliability of the gravitational wave observations included in the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalogs (GWTC).