Deciphering the blips, bumps and whirls of the gravitational universe

The dawn of gravitational wave astronomy is upon us as Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo begin to come on line later this year. With the first detection of gravitational waves, the cosmic cacophony of the gravitational universe will be open to us, allowing us to probe some of the densest regions in the universe as well as some of the most energetic astronomical phenomena (eg. gamma-ray bursts). In order to perform gravitational wave astronomy, one must decipher the astrophysical information encoded in the detected gravitational wave signals. This seminar will give a brief overview of the methods for performing gravitational wave astronomy, based on Bayesian inference, and highlight some examples of gravitational wave astronomy for "unmodelled" burst gravitational wave signals and other transients signals.