Department of Astronomy

Theo O’Neill wants to understand how stars are formed. They will now pursue their research as recently named a Goldwater Scholar. Goldwater Scholarships are awarded through a partnership between the U.S. Department of Defense’s National Defense Education Programs and the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. Read more...

Ilse Cleeves, astronomy, University of Virginia, is among 24 outstanding teacher-scholars in chemistry, physics, and astronomy named recipients of Research Corporation for Science Advancement’s 2022 Cottrell Scholar Awards. Each award is $100,000.    

Recipients are chosen through a rigorous peer-review process of applications from a wide variety of public and private research universities and primarily undergraduate institutions in the United States and Canada. Their award proposals incorporate both research and science education.

Professor Aaron Evans and co-author Lee Armus discuss what might happen when the Milky Way meets the Andromeda Galaxy in this month's Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/galaxy-collisions-preview-milky-ways-fate/

Image: Forecasted future: An illustration shows a possible view of the merging Milky Way–Andromeda system as seen from Pluto, which may get tossed to the galaxy's outskirts, along with the solar system. Credit: Ron Miller

Nitya Kallivayalil was invited by NSF to sit on a Dark Matter/Dark Energy panel at Awesome-Con (https://awesome-con.com) this past weekend. Other panelists included Joe Pesce (moderator), Zohreh Davoudi, Carter Hall, Marc Kamionkowski and Charles Keeton.

The Owens Family Foundation has selected Nitya Kallivayalil as a recipient of their funding in the amount of $84,000 per year over a three year period. This gift will be used to further her research in near field cosmology and will enable the hiring of a prize postdoctoral fellow to work on resolved stellar populations in the local universe. The Owens Family Foundation has historically funded groundbreaking basic science research that is high risk high reward with a focus on methodological developments.