ICTS

The Advanced LIGO and VIRGO observatories detected several gravitational-wave events in their first and second observing runs from 2015 to 2017. The detections were only possible due to sophisticated analyses of noisy strain data that were historically conducted within the collaboration. Recently, we developed an entirely independent analysis of LIGO data that improved its reach by rigorously accounting for inherent systematics, and thereby identified seven new binary black-hole mergers within, including the highest spinning event reported to date. In this talk, I will provide a birds-eye view of the process used to make these detections.