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Dance Your PhD

Astrophysics Student Wins International 'Dance Your PhD' Competition

February 25, 2022

Donning pointe shoes and a poufy pink tutu, Xiaohan Wu gracefully leaps across the marled dance floor. She stoops, collects an intricate hand fan and proceeds to twirl, delicately waving the fan back and forth as she spins.

But this is not a recital and Wu is no dance student. She's a graduate astronomy student who has created an interpretative dance explaining her research on the early universe — and she's clearly got chops.

On Thursday, Wu was named the winner of the physics...

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Fireman family

Two new alumni, Amber Medina and Theron Carmichael, both 2021 recipients of an Edward Fireman Fellowship

May 28, 2021

Amber will be heading to the University of Texas at Austin as an Early Career Fellow. This postdoctoral position is unique in that in addition to furthering her research on the radiation environments of low-mass stars, she will also be mentored on how to become an effective teacher and research advisor. 

Theron's postdoc plans are to start a research associate position at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland this fall. There he will continue researching transiting brown dwarfs from the TESS mission. 

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Jane Huang

Jane Huang Receives the 2020 Robert L. Brown Outstanding Dissertation Award and the 2020 IAU PhD Prize

May 26, 2021

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) / Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) is pleased to announce that Dr. Jane Huang is the winner of the 2020 Robert L. Brown Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award, for her Harvard Dissertation, Rings and Spirals in Protoplanetary Disks: The ALMA View of Planet Formation.

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Ellen Price

Ellen Price wins 2021 Eric R. Keto Prize in Theoretical Astrophysics

May 25, 2021

Congratulations to Ellen Price for winning the 2021 Eric R. Keto Prize for Graduate Students in Theoretical Astrophysics. Ellen won for her thesis “Simulating Protoplanetary Disk Dynamics and Investigating their Exoplanet Outcomes.” Karin Oberg was her advisor.

Next year Ellen will take the 51 Pegasus b Fellowship to University of Chicago.

The Keto Prize, endowed with a generous donation by ITC Senior Member Eric Keto, is awarded each year for the best thesis in theoretical astrophysics by a student at the CfA, as selected by the...

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Allessandra

Graduating senior, Alessandra Canta, winner of both a College Hoopes Prize and the Department's Senior Goldberg Prize.

May 14, 2021

Alessandra switched her concentration to Astronomy only a year ago, just in time to win the most prestigious prizes for her senior thesis "“Unlocking the Key to Life: Observation and Formation of Nitriles in Protoplanetary Disks".   Karin Öberg was her advisor.  She will be starting graduate school in London this September.  

https://prizes.fas.harvard.edu/hoopes-prize

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Brian

Brian Hsu awarded the department's 2021 Goldberg Prize for best junior research thesis.

May 14, 2021

Brian's thesis was entitled Bayesian Analysis of 21 Hydrogen-poor Superluminous Supernovae from the Dark Energy Survey and No Evidence for a Redshift Evolution." His advisor was Griffin Hosseinzadeh.

Brian has submitted it to both arXiv and the ApJ.  In the meantime, he will continue a project from last summer with the intention of publishing it by the end of the summer. Brian will be on leave this coming academic year but will most likely continue doing research with Edo Berger and start brainstorming for his senior thesis some time in...

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Laura Blecha

Alumna Prof. Laura Blecha named 2021 Cottrell Scholar by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement.

March 22, 2021

Prof. Blecha earned her PhD at Harvard working with Avi Loeb.  She is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the University of Florida where a fair number of recent Harvard graduates have landed including Sarah Ballard, Paul Torrey, Zach Slepian and Stephen Eikenberry.

More information on her award can be found here. 

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Jennifer Bergner

Alumna Jennifer Bergner awarded AAS Laboratory Astrophysics Division 2021 Dissertation Prize

March 15, 2021

The Laboratory Astrophysics Division (LAD) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) is pleased to announce the recipient of its 2021 Dissertation Prize, given to an individual who has recently completed an outstanding theoretical or experimental doctoral dissertation in laboratory astrophysics. This year’s prize goes to Dr. Jennifer Bergner for her thesis Tracing Organic Complexity During Star and Planet Formation. Dr. Bergner earned her PhD at Harvard...

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NASA logo

Alyssa Goodman and Pat Udomprasert awarded NASA Science Activation project entitled "Cosmic Storytelling with NASA Data"

March 1, 2021

NASA is funding 30 awards across the U.S to implement the next phase of Science Activation—a community-based approach to connect NASA science with learners of all ages. 

The Astronomy project is entitled Cosmic Storytelling with NASA Data (CosmicDS).  The CosmicDS project will facilitate connections between astronomers who want to tell the story of a discovery and inspire learners by letting them interrogate the data behind the story on their own, using easy-to-use but powerful data science and visualization techniques. ...

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Amir Siraj

Senior Concentrator Amir Siraj awarded a place in the Forbes 30 Under 30 for 2021. He is the youngest member in this year's Science cohort.

December 2, 2020

Siraj is a student in astrophysics at Harvard whose research has explored the impact of comets and asteroids on planetary systems, new ways to detect interstellar objects and efficient techniques to detect small black holes. He's also a classical pianist pursuing a degree at the New England Conservatory.

Read his full profile here: https://www.forbes.com/profile/amir-siraj/?list=30under30-science&sh=2e2836351fda

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Covid Watch Logo

Recent alumni help government COVID-19 data and epidemiology efforts

October 21, 2020
Since April, PhD alumni Fernando Becerra, How-Huan Chen, and Anjali Tripathi have been working on the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health COVID-19 data and epidemiology team.  The group has used their data and visualization skills for a range of projects, including their newly created COVID Watch website.  Released for the start of flu season, the site makes data available for tracking COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses across the country's largest county.  More at: ... Read more about Recent alumni help government COVID-19 data and epidemiology efforts
Amir Siraj

Astronomy concentrator, Amir Siraj, is recipient of Harvard College Hoopes Prize and the department's Goldberg Prize.

May 22, 2020

Amir Siraj is a junior at Harvard College in Leverett House, studying astrophysics. He is a classical pianist and is concurrently pursuing a Master's in Music at the New England Conservatory of Music for piano performance. In his free time, he enjoys conducting the Hasty Pudding Theatricals and singing with the Harvard Krokodiloes. 

Hoopes Prizes are given to select undergraduates for excellent undergraduate work and excellence in the art of teaching. ...

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Tom Wagg

Tom Wagg receives a Senior Goldberg Prize along with Noel Chou who was awarded the Junior Goldberg Prize.

May 18, 2020

Noel Chou is a rising senior studying astronomy and she is also interested in computer science. She is from the California Bay Area. She has been privileged to have had an introduction to the exciting fields of machine learning and supernovae research under the guidance of Professor Edo Berger and Dr. Ashley Villar through her project, Host Galaxy Based Supernova Classification with Machine Learning.

Tom Wagg is originally from Newcastle-under-Lyme in England. He resided in Mather House and is part of the class of 2020, concentrating in...

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Josh Speagle

Graduating student, Josh Speagle, awarded the annual Keto Prize for his thesis "Mapping the Milky Way in the Age of Gaia."

May 8, 2020

The Eric R. Keto Prize for Graduate Students in Theoretical Astrophysics, endowed with a generous donation by ITC Senior Member Eric Keto, is awarded each year for the best thesis in theoretical astrophysics by a student at the CfA, as selected by the Senior Members of the ITC.

In the Fall, Josh will begin a five year Dunlap Postdoctoral Fellowship (Dunlap Institute, University of Toronto)

Abstract of Josh's thesis

 

A central problem in astronomy is converting the 2-D positions of sources observed on the sky to their 3-D...

Read more about Graduating student, Josh Speagle, awarded the annual Keto Prize for his thesis "Mapping the Milky Way in the Age of Gaia."
Lars Hernquist

2020 Gruber Prize in Cosmology has been awarded to Harvard's Lars Hernquist and Volker Springel of the Max Planck Institute

May 6, 2020

Citations reads: "The 2020 Gruber Cosmology Prize recognizes Lars Hernquist, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and Volker Springel, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, for their defining contributions to cosmological simulations, a method that tests existing theories of, and inspires new investigations into, the formation of structures at every scale from stars to galaxies to the universe itself."

Press release:  https://gruber.yale.edu/2020-gruber-cosmology-prize-...

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