The IJCLab “Gravitational Waves” group is among the founders of the Virgo Collaboration in the 1990s.
Virgo is a gravitational-wave detector. It is a giant laser interferometer on the ground, whose mirrors are suspended and under vacuum. It has been designed and built, and is now operated, by an international collaboration that counts several hundred members from more than 100 European research institutions.
The Virgo detector, located at the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO) in Cascina (near Pisa), Italy, is part of a global network that currently counts four instruments: Virgo, plus the two US-based LIGO detectors, Hanford (WA), Livingston (LA) and the KAGRA detector, built underground in Japan. The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) network has now detected dozens of gravitational-wave signals since 2015 and more are expected in the future.