Professor Marka received his Diploma from Kossuth Lajos University (Hungary) and his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. He has previously worked at Cornell and Caltech. Currently, he is leader of the Columbia Experimental Gravity Group (a member of LIGO) in addition to being a professor at Columbia. He received an NSF CAREER Award and a GRAND Challenges Explorations Award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last year.