There is a disturbance in spacetime. The violent collision of two black holes has unleashed a torrent of gravitational waves into the Universe. Propagating through space at light speed, these invisible waves alone carry the news of this catastrophic crash. After a harrowing journey across thousands of galaxies, the weakened waves eventually pass through a small, insignificant planet...

In this talk, I briefly review the first direct detections of gravitational waves were made, with an emphasis on the role of data analysis for compact binary coalescences. Then, I highlight the main results of my thesis, which aim to improve current data analysis techniques and increase the sensitivity of ground-based detectors.

image credit is to LSC/Sonoma State University/Aurore Simonnet