News: Awards

Wendy Freedman, John and Marion Sullivan University Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics,  has been elected to the Royal Society, a fellowship of many of the world’s most eminent scientists and the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence. This year, 59 scientists from around the world were elected Fellows or Foreign Members of the Society for their outstanding contributions to science.

Improvements include upgraded receiver, solar panels to power the observatory and data processing pipeline.

Congratulations to Celeste Keith for successfully defending her Ph.D. dissertation on "OBSERVATIONAL CONSEQUENCES OF HAWKING RADIATION FROM PRIMORDIAL BLACK HOLES".

In early 2023, the Community Engagement Working Group in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics organized the South Side Science Art Contest, open to children K-12 who attend schools on the South Side of Chicago. Work on this initiative had started in the Autumn Quarter of 2022, following a successful proposal by the group to the PSD's Inclusive Climate Grant, a fund that supports initiatives that increase diversity or positively impact that division’s culture.

Prof. Wendy Freedman, a leading astronomer who has made fundamental measurements of our universe, will deliver the 2023 Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture on May 15 at the Rubenstein Forum at the University of Chicago.

Adina Feinstein (Ph.D. 2023) won a NASA Astrophysics Postdoctoral Sagan Fellowship for 2023.

Diego Garza (Physics, Astrophysics, 2023) and Aster Taylor (Astrophysics, 2023) won the  NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

Robert Rosneris a theoretical physicist who since 1987 has been on the faculty of the University of Chicago, where he is the William E. Wrather Distinguished Service Professor in the departments of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics, as well as in the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the Harris School of Public Policy. 

Irina Zhuravleva, a Clare Boothe Luce assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, has earned a prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship.

“Capturing the Stars: Women’s Networks and the Advancement of Science at Yerkes Observatory, 1895–1940”, Richard G. Kron (Astronomy and Physics), Kristine Palmieri (Institute on the Formation of Knowledge), Andrea Twiss-Brooks (The University of Chicago Library), Emily Kern (History).

Prof. Michael Gladders is the 2022-2023 recipient of the Marian and Stuart Rice Research Award, a U. Chicago Physical Sciences Divisional honor that provides funding for intellectually exciting and innovative research ventures that enables new directions of research.

Robert Rosner likes big questions.
How could nuclear power help humanity in a warming climate? How can physicists better explain their work to the public? And why are magnetic fields… well, everywhere? “The nerve of them, being so ubiquitous,” he says.

Assistant Professor  Leslie Rogers has been awarded the J. and J. Neubauer Faculty Development Fellowship in the College for 2022-2023.

Dan Fabrycky has been promoted from Associate Professor to Professor in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics and the College.

Study by Jared Siegel, UChicago ’22, sets upper limits on the masses of 50 exoplanets.