The Astronomy Department is pleased to announce that Amina Diop has been selected as the first John F. Angle Graduate Fellow in Astronomy. The Angle Fellowships are funded by a gift from Carol Angle and Fritz Angle. They honor Dr. John F. Angle MD (below), who is a nationally and internationally recognized leader in vascular and interventional radiology at UVa. He specializes in minimally invasive techniques to treat peripheral arterial disease, aortic aneurysm disease, venous insufficiency, venous thromboembolic disease, dialysis access maintenance, and cancerous tumors.
Amina Diop is entering UVa as a new Ph.D. graduate student this fall. She got her BA in Astrophysics & Arabic from Williams College, with a semester at the University College London. Amina is from Senegal, and has studied Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Math and Physics at the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her research interests are astrochemistry and protoplanetary disks. For the last two years she has been working on an extensive research project, investigating the vertical structure of turbulence in the protoplanetary disk around the young star DM Tau. Amina modelled the emission from the molecular ion N2H+ coming from the disk. She won the Beth Brown Memorial Award for her poster on this subject at the National Society of Black Physicists’ annual meeting earlier this year. Nitya Kallivayalil, co-Chair of Graduate Admissions said, “I was really impressed with Amina’s poster at the conference, and upon chatting with her further, I found out that her true passion lies in radio astronomy, and that she wants to be a radio astronomer. I think she has made a wise decision, therefore, to come to UVa for graduate school, and we are thrilled that she chose us.” Amina also has extensive teaching and outreach experience and is interested in helping minority students both in the US and overseas.
