30th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics

The Texas meetings are a biennial series of international scientific meetings that are held every two years since the first symposium was held in Dallas in 1963. The 30th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics took place at Portsmouth Guildhall and the University of Portsmouth from 15th to 20th December 2019 (http://texas2019.org) organised by the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation.

•409 delegates participated from 41 different countries across five continents. 54 participants came from developing countries. 147 participants were from UK universities.
•136 participants (33%) were students paying a reduced fee.
•20% of participants (81) were female, and 16% of students (22) were female.
•There were 23 invited plenary talks on topics including the Einstein Horizon Telescope, observations of merging neutron stars, testing gravity with gravitational waves, cosmology with large galaxy surveys, cosmic rays, dark matter and the first stars. 35% of the invited plenary speakers (8) were female, with a mix of established and early career researchers.
•There were 20 parallel sessions with 286 contributed talks covering topics in gravitational waves, relativity, cosmology, compact objects, particle astrophysics, and a session on equality and diversity. 35% of speakers in the parallel sessions (99) were students, of which 18% (51) were female.
•All delegates signed up to a code of conduct when they registered; participants were expected to show respect and courtesy to other attendees and staff.

During the conference we held a public event “Exploring the University of Black Holes with Gravitational Waves” in the Guildhall on the evening of Tuesday 17th December. A panel of experts discussed the discovery of gravitational waves from colliding black holes. The panel was chaired by Bernard Schutz and included Sheila Rowan, Tanja Hinderer, Laura Nuttall and Bangalore Sathyaprakash.