For outstanding scholarly achievement by a graduate student close to finishing their dissertation in Astronomy or in Physics with preference to Astronomy.
2024 |
Andrea Antoni (Graduate) (Astronomy) Chris Moeckel (Graduate) (Earth and Planetary Sciences) |
2023 |
Casey Lam (Graduate) (Astronomy) Emily Liepold (Graduate) (Physics) |
2022 |
Philip Kempski (Graduate) (Astronomy) |
2021 |
Kareem El-Badry (Graduate) (Astronomy) Wren Seuss (Graduate) (Astronomy) |
2020 |
Nicholas Kern (Graduate) (Astronomy) |
2019 |
Sean Ressler (Graduate) (Physics) |
2018 |
Jason Wang (Graduate) (Astronomy) |
2017 |
Katherine de Kleer (Graduate) (Astronomy) |
2016 |
Josiah Schwab (Graduate) (Astronomy) |
2015 |
Erik Petigura (Graduate) (Astronomy) |
2014 |
Charles “Chat” Hull (Graduate) (Astronomy) Dick Plambeck Chat Hull’s research is focused on polarization measurements of the radio continuum and spectral lines to learn more about star formation in molecular clouds. Before starting as a Jansky Fellow at Harvard, he will be taking a cross-country road trip across the northern U.S. and southern Canada, hoping he will arrive at Harvard when the first snow falls. Michael McCourt (Graduate) (Astronomy) Mike’s thesis includes many original contributions to our understanding of the physics of galaxy cluster plasmas. For example, he developed an analytical and numerical understanding of how thermal instabilities regulate the rate at which cold gas flows to small radii, fueling star formation and black hole growth in the centers of clusters. This likely provides a key to understanding why cluster plasmas have the properties they do. Mike will be an ITC postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard. |
2013 |
Jonathan Pober (Graduate) (Astronomy) Donald Backer Jonnie initially worked with Professor Don Backer on PAPER: Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization. When Backer passed away in 2010, new faculty member Aaron Parsons essentially became Don’s successor and as a result, became Jonnie’s advisor. Jonnie received a NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship, which he took to the University of Washington. Pober completed his Ph.D. in 2013 and is currently a NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Washington, Department of Physics. |
2012 |
Andrew Siemion (Graduate) (Astronomy) Andrew Siemion’s research focused on designing instruments and experiments to detect rare and novel radio phenomena, specifically the detection and analysis of coherent sources of electromagnetic emission. Andrew is heavily involved in developing new computing technology and has organized and taught digital instrumentation workshops at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Taiwan, and the National Astronomical Observatories in China. He currently holds a joint research position with UC Berkeley and ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. Nicholas McConnell (Graduate) (Astronomy) James Graham Nicholas McConnell’s research measured stellar motions in the Brightest Cluster Galaxies (BCGs) and compared them to models of galaxies to determine the mass of the central supermassive black hole in each galaxy. Working in collaboration with advisors Chung-Pei Ma and James Graham, he discovered two black holes with record-breaking masses of at least 10 billion suns. After completing his Ph.D. at Berkeley, McConnell accepted the Beatrice Watson Parrent Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Hawai’i, where he is continuing his research. |
2011 |
Daniel Perley (Graduate) (Astronomy) |
2010 |
Onsi Fakhouri (Astronomy) Onsi Fakhouri investigated how galaxies and their host dark matter halos were assembled in a universe composed of dark matter and dark energy. He analyzed more than 100 million objects in the largest cosmological simulations performed to date and quantified the rate at which galaxies merged with each other to form bigger galaxies. Onsi’s thesis work was published in seven journal articles and was a tour de force in the study of the growths of dark matter halos. |
2009 |
Aaron Robert Parsons (Astronomy) |
2008 |
Ruth Murray-Clay (Astronomy) |
2007 |
John Johnson (Astronomy) |
2006 |
Marshall D. Perrin (Astronomy) |
2005 |
Mark Krumholtz (Physics) |
2004 |
Alison Coil (Astronomy) |
2003 |
Chao-Lin Kuo (Physics) |
2002 |
Anatoly Spitkovsky (Physics) |
2001 |
Evan Scannapieco (Physics) |
2000 |
Douglas Leonard (Astronomy) |
1999 |
Douglas Paul Finkbeiner (Physics) |
1998 |
Nancy Levinson (Astronomy) |
1997 |
Geoffrey Copeland Bower (Astronomy) |
1996 |
Rosa Gonzalez (Astronomy) |
1995 |
Wayne Hu (Physics) |
1994 |
Michael Brown (Astronomy) |
1993 |
Yves Gallant (Physics) |
1992 |
Michael Richmond |
1991 |
Joseph Shields (Astronomy) |
1990 |
Bon Chul Koo (Astronomy) |
1989 |
Frank Bertoldi (Physics) |
1988 |
Michael Strauss (Physics) |
1987 |
Fred Adams (Physics) |
1986 |
Mark Hurwitz (Astronomy) |
1985 |
Christopher Martin (Physics) |
1984 |
Stanislav Djorgovski (Astronomy) |
1983 |
Robert Mathieu (Astronomy) |