Luis Lehner
Co-Investigator
Luis Lehner is the Carlo Fidani Rainer Weiss Chair in Theoretical Physics and a senior faculty member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Formerly at Louisiana State University and adjunct professor at the University of Guelph, he joined Perimeter full-time in 2012.
His research centers on the nonlinear and dynamical regimes of general relativity, including black hole and neutron star mergers, gravitational-wave generation, turbulence in gravity, higher-dimensional spacetimes, and tests of modified gravity. Lehner is recognized for pioneering numerical and analytical methods that revealed new phenomena such as gravitational turbulence and nonlinear black-hole dynamics in asymptotically flat and AdS spacetimes.
Within the Simons Collaboration on Black Holes and Strong Gravity (launched 2025), Lehner serves as one of the Principal Investigators, contributing expertise in high-precision simulations and theoretical modeling. The Collaboration Director is Nicolás Yunes (University of Illinois), leading a network of twelve PIs across several institutions. The collaboration includes a growing group of postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, and consultants funded through Simons Foundation support, as well as affiliated scientists worldwide who contribute to related studies in gravity, data science, and numerical methods.
Lehner also serves on the Scientific Council of the ICTP–SAIFR in Brazil, is a Fellow of the Center of Gravity at the Niels Bohr Institute and has been a member of the Advisory Board of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) at UCSB. His honors and service include election as a Fellow of the American Physical Society (2011), Fellow of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation (2013), and Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Argentina (2023). He served as Faculty Chair (2018–2021) and Deputy Chair (2014–2017) at Perimeter.
Contact
Simons Collaboration ON Black Holes and Strong Gravity 