Professor Soares-Santos’ research focuses on uncovering the nature of the accelerated expansion of the cosmos. Soares-Santos contributed to the construction of the Dark Energy Camera, one of the largest telescope cameras in the world which she now employs to search for gravitational wave–emitting collisions of neutron stars and black holes. The program aims at establishing gravitational waves as a completely novel method to study cosmic acceleration in the future. It has been successful in detecting the first neutron star collision ever observed, a discovery heralded as the Science breakthrough of the year, in 2017. She was awarded the prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship in 2019.

While preparing for many more discoveries on the gravitational wavefront, Soares-Santos also contributes to the effort of measuring the cosmic acceleration using traditional methods such as galaxy clusters and gravitational lensing. Together, traditional and novel methods blaze a trail for a major leap in our understanding of the universe. Soares-Santos research has recently been featured in the PBS documentary TV series Nova Wonders and has been covered by major news outlets worldwide.

Previously, Professor Soares-Santos was the Landsman Career Development Chair & Assistant Professor of Physics, Brandeis University.

She was also an Associate Scientist & Postdoctoral Research Associate, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.