Dr. Tal Adi (Abadi)

Dr. Tal Adi (Abadi)
Dr. Tal Adi (Abadi)
Israeli Postdoctoral Scholar
2024-2025 Cohort
University of Southern California

Tal Adi completed his PhD in Physics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where he used early modified gravity (MG) theories to address a major problem facing cosmology today, known as the Hubble tension. Specifically, he addressed the differences between inferred values of the current expansion rate of the universe derived from local observations (such as those from the Hubble Space Telescope) and those derived from early-universe cosmic microwave background (CMB) measurements.

In other research, he used strongly-lensed fast radio bursts (FRBs) to probe MG models that had been introduced to explain cosmic acceleration. He showed that upcoming experiments could use FRBs to probe new regions of parameter space with far better precision than was possible previously.

Dr. Adi collaborated fruitfully during his doctoral work with researchers from other institutions, including Johns Hopkins, Swarthmore College and the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at Montpellier, France.

Now doing postdoctoral research in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southern California, Dr. Adi focuses on gravitational waves (GWs), offering a new way to study the universe by enhancing our understanding of gravity, extreme states of matter, and black holes. Traditionally observed using interferometry, GWs can also be detected through the relative movements of stars caused by GWs at Earth, allowing for the exploration of GW frequencies that current and upcoming experiments don’t cover. He uses data from Kepler, a NASA Discovery mission launched in 2009 that searched for Earth-sized and smaller planets in the habitable zone of other stars in our galaxy, for his groundbreaking relative astrometric measurements of GWs.

Dr. Adi began his teaching career while still an undergraduate at Ariel University in Israel. He continued to teach Analytical Mechanics, Electrodynamics, and many areas of Physics at Tel Aviv University and later at Ben-Gurion University. He aspires to expand our knowledge of the fundamental principles that govern our universe as well as our understanding of its origins. By advancing the young field of cosmology in Israel to an international level, he hopes to make Israel a meaningful contributor to the field.