Building a next generation gravitational wave observatory in space.

The LISA collaboration is an international project, lead by the European Space Agency, to develop a space-based gravitational wave interferometer. While the principles of gravitational wave interferometry have been successfully demonstrated by Earth-based detectors such as LIGO, LISA represents the next generation in gravitational wave detection. While building a space-based interferometer presents new challenges to the scientific and engineering communities, the successful deployment of such a tool will offer many exciting new opportunities for the fields of astrophysics and cosmology. In this talk I will introduce the LISA project, and discuss how scientists in New Zealand are becoming involved with the collaboration. I will also discuss some of the science objectives, with a particular focus on the ongoing search for the nature of dark matter.