2012

Four Astronomy Undergraduates are Selected for Hoopes Prize

May 7, 2012

Eighty-nine seniors received this year’s prestigious Hoopes Prize for outstanding research or scholarly work, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Prize Office announced Friday.

The distinction—funded by the estate of Thomas T. Hoopes ’19—comes with a $4,000 award for students and a $1,000 honorarium for faculty advisors who nominated student theses or projects this spring, according to Tarik Umar ’10, an economics concentrator and a Hoopes winner.

Four prizes were awarded to Harvard Astronomy Undergraduates:

Dierickx, Marion Inge for her submission entitled "Constraining Local
Group Dark Matter Using M33's Past Orbit" - nominated by Professor Abraham
Loeb

Fogarty, Kevin Welsh for his submission entitled "Galaxy Cluster Mass
Proxies: Examining X-Ray and Sunyaev- Zel'dovich Effect Observations of
114 Galaxy Clusters in the Planck Early SZ Catalog" - nominated by Dr.
Christine Jones

Kruse, Ethan Alexander for his submission entitled "A Systematic Search
for New Kepler Circumbinary Planets" - nominated by Dr. Darin Ragozzine

Rice, Thomas Sean for his submission entitled "A Hierarchical Catalog of
Molecular Clouds in the Milky Way" - nominated by Professor Alyssa Goodman

Hoopes Prizes Awarded to Top Theses, Harvard Crimson

Avi Loeb 2012 American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow

April 17, 2012

Harvard Astronomy Professor and Department Chair was selected to be a 2012 American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow. Founded in 1780, the Academy is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. Election to membership is an uncommon honor. Other 2012 AAAS Fellows include Mel Books, Clint Eastwood, and
Hillary Clinton.

Complete List of 2012 AAAS Fellows ( aaas.pdf )

Robert Kirshner wins the 2012 Guggenheim Physics Fellowship

April 13, 2012

"The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced its new fellows for 2012 in the United States and Canada on Thursday (April 12). The 181 recipients represent a diverse mix of scientific, scholarly, and artistic fields, and many of them are affiliated with colleges or universities. The winners, chosen from nearly 3,000 candidates, will receive grants ranging from six to 12 months that are intended to allow the recipients to pursue creative projects with as much freedom as possible. A list of the new fellows is available on the foundation’s Web site." (http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/guggenheim-foundation-announces-181-new-fellows-in-the-u-s-and-canada/42335)

Complete list of Guggenheim Fellows

Kirshner Guggenheim Fellows Bio, http://www.gf.org/fellows/17246-robert-p-kirshner 

Rating research risk - Nature Jobs by Abraham Loeb

April 12, 2012

In physics, the value of a theory is measured by how well it agrees with experimental data. But how should the physics community gauge the value of an emerging theory that cannot yet be tested experimentally? With no reality check, a less than rigorous hypothesis such as string theory may linger on, even though physicists have been unable to work out its actual value in describing nature.

Nature Article by Abraham Loeb

Shooting for the Stars

March 29, 2012

A vibrant online astronomy community created by PhD students highlights new research and advice for professional growth. 

Among the founders and contributors of Astrobites are, from left, Aaron Bray (G2), Elisabeth Newton (G2), Nathan Sanders (G2), Joshua Suresh (G2), Christopher Faesi (G1), and Courtney Dressing (G2), here pictured on their home turf, the observatory at 60 Garden Street.


GSAS Article

Astrobites Website


Planet Starship: Runaway Planets Zoom at a Fraction of Light-Speed

March 24, 2012

Cambridge, MA - Seven years ago, astronomers boggled when they found the first runaway star flying out of our Galaxy at a speed of 1.5 million miles per hour. The discovery intrigued theorists, who wondered: If a star can get tossed outward at such an extreme velocity, could the same thing happen to planets?

New research shows that the answer is yes. Not only do runaway planets exist, but some of them zoom through space at a few percent of the speed of light - up to 30 million miles per hour.

CFA Press Release

Time Magazine

MSNBC

Using galaxies as yardsticks Astronomy Professor Daniel Eisenstein builds a 3-D map of universe

March 6, 2012


Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

Daniel Eisenstein is investigating the universe, using galaxies as his ruler, seeking to understand the cosmos’ large-scale structure and confirm theories about the dark energy that drives its expansion. Read more in this Harvard Gazette Article: Using galaxies as yardsticks Astronomy Professor Daniel Eisenstein builds a 3-D map of universe.

... Read more about Using galaxies as yardsticks Astronomy Professor Daniel Eisenstein builds a 3-D map of universe

Kaisey Mandel is a finalist for this year's Savage Award for the best doctoral dissertation by the International Society for Bayesian Analysis

February 15, 2012

Kaisey Mandel (Harvard Ph.D. Astronomy 2011), who is currently a postdoc in the Astrostatistics group at Imperial College London has been notified that he is a finalist for this year's Savage Award for the best doctoral dissertation by the International Society for Bayesian Analysis.  They are inviting him to their meeting in Tokyo to give a talk and attend the award ceremonies.

http://bayesian.org/awards/Savage.html

Kaisey notes two of the Honorable Mentions for this award in previous ...

Read more about Kaisey Mandel is a finalist for this year's Savage Award for the best doctoral dissertation by the International Society for Bayesian Analysis

Twelve students and postdocs from the Astronomy department were awarded Einstein/Hubble/Sagan fellowships in 2012

February 14, 2012

Twelve students and postdocs from the Astronomy department were awarded
Einstein/Hubble/Sagan fellowships in 2012: Laura Blecha, Smadar Naoz, Joey
Neilsen and Meng Su were awarded an Einstein fellowship; Kaitlin
Kratter, Matt McQuinn (former student), Stella Offner, Yue Shen, Jack
Steiner, and Mark Vogelsberger were awarded a Hubble fellowship;
and Sarah Ballard and Jean-Michel Desert were awarded the Sagan
fellowship. 
... Read more about Twelve students and postdocs from the Astronomy department were awarded Einstein/Hubble/Sagan fellowships in 2012

Astronomy department senior lecturer, Phil Sadler, won the Robert A. Millikan Medal of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT)

February 14, 2012

Synopsis: Tidal Disruption of a Star (N. Stone and A. Loeb)

February 9, 2012

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Swift

The cores of most galaxies are thought to harbor black holes with masses of a million or more suns. But many remain unseen until an unlucky star passes too close and is pulled apart by tidal forces. The stellar debris gathers into a disk and spirals towards the black hole in the center. As it does, it may form a jet of material that beams high-energy light like a flashlight. Last spring, the Swift satellite measured a flare of x rays and gamma rays from a distant galaxy that has the hallmarks of such a jet that happens to point right at us.... Read more about Synopsis: Tidal Disruption of a Star (N. Stone and A. Loeb)

Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy to Heather A. Knutson, Astronomy PhD '09

February 8, 2012

The Annie Jump Cannon Award for outstanding research and promise for future research by a woman goes to Heather Knutson (Caltech) "for her pioneering work on the characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres." Knutson's groundbreaking observations of wavelength-dependent thermal emission of exoplanets over large fractions of their orbit have revealed details of atmospheric dynamics, energy transport, inversion layers, and chemical composition. Her work has expanded the rich field of planetary characterization by providing new windows into the atmospheres of planets beyond the confines of our solar system.

... Read more about Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy to Heather A. Knutson, Astronomy PhD '09

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