For the City Times

Kaisa Crawford-Taylor, a senior at Lincoln High School in Wisconsin Rapids has been selected to present at the annual White House Science Fair held on Apr. 13.

At the age of 8, while watching a television special on black holes, Crawford-Taylor decided that she wanted to become a theoretical astrophysicist. At 17, she’s already accomplishing her dream.

Kaisa Crawford-Taylor. (Contributed Photo)

Kasia’s Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS) project uncovers very massive black holes capable of emitting gravitational waves – such as those recently discovered by LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) – using open databases; namely, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s tenth data release of quasars and New York University’s Value Added Catalogue. Using the computer language Python, Kaisa created a program that deftly sorted through the combined databases’ 2.7 million galaxies. The program returned a handful of potential binaries, which Kasia analyzed to identify four supermassive black hole binary candidates.

According to a press release by Wisconsin Rapids Public Schools Science Coordinator David Bergerson, “WRPS is extremely proud of Kaisa and congratulate her in being selected to present at the Whitehouse on Wednesday.”