Samaya Nissanke

Samaya Nissanke is an Associate Professor in Gravitational-Wave and Multi-Messenger Astrophysics and the Spokesperson for the GRAPPA Centre for Excellence in Gravitation and Astroparticle Physics at the University of Amsterdam. She has played a founding role in the emerging field of multi-messenger astronomy. She was one of the main authors of the discovery paper of the first binary neutron star merger, seen in gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation.

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Nissanke's work has been recognized by many prizes. In 2020, she was awarded the New Horizons in Physics Prize from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation with and Kendrick Smith for "the development of novel techniques to extract fundamental physics from astronomical data". In 2021, she was awarded the Suffrage Award Award for Engineering and Physical Sciences for "outstanding science, science communication and support for women in STEM". In 2024, Nissanke received the HEAD Mid-Career Prize from the American Astronomical Society.