At the annual Awards Ceremony, Rita Fireman and Astronomy Chair Avi Loeb are seen presenting the Fireman Fellowship Award to Philip Cowperthwaite for this year's best dissertation in the field of Astrophysics at Harvard.  This award is named in honor of Rita's husband, Edward Fireman, a long time physicist at the Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory.  Phil is a student of Edo Berger and will be starting a Hubble Post-doctoral Fellowship at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena. 

Hannah Jang-Condell, our alum who received her Ph.D. in 2004, has been given tenure at the University of Wyoming.  She is an Associate Professor in their Physics and Astronomy Department. She studies planet formation theory, protoplanetary disk models, extrasolar planets, computational astrophysics, astrobiology.  Congratulations, Hannah!

Sarah Wellons, Andrew Vanderburg, Yuan-Sen Ting, Josh Suresh, Sukrit Ranjan, Philip Mocz, Meredith MacGregor, Kirit Karkare, Dawn Graninger (not shown Laura Schaefer)

In case you haven't already heard the news about Ryan Hickox - a former Harvard grad student - now tenured professor at Dartmouth!  Ryan also is one of the first "house professors" in the house system that Dartmouth is expanding:  

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Local public radio station WBUR recently broadcast a segment about the Watertown play Silent Sky  about the Harvard College Observatory "computers:" Meredith Hughes (PhD 2010) is interviewed at the end of the segment about her great-grandmother, a  former head computer at Lockheed Martin. ...

The 2017 Annie Jump Cannon Award for outstanding research and promise for the future by a postdoctoral woman scientist goes to Rebekah Dawson (Pennsylvania State University, Harvard Astronomy PhD 2013) for her work modeling the dynamical interactions of exoplanets in multiplanet systems. Her studies help explain exoplanets’ mutual orbital inclinations and eccentricities as well as their migration toward and away from each other and their host star. She has also...

The Harvard Gazette features Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin who was promoted as the first woman to receive a full-time, non-female-only professorship from Harvard College. 

Link:  Written in the Stars 

Adam Riess, Nobel Laureate and ’96 alumnus of the Harvard Astronomy Department, has just been named a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins. Supported by a $350M gift from Michael Bloomberg, the BDPs will form a cohort of 50 world-class, interdisciplinary scholars at Johns Hopkins. Adam is the 7^th internally selected faculty member to be chosen for this honor.

Johns Hopkins Link: ...

Dr. Wen-fai Fong, who completed her doctoral thesis in 2014 with Prof. Edo Berger, was awarded the 2016 Outstanding Doctoral Thesis in Astrophysics Prize from the American Physical Society Division of Astrophysics.  Dr. Fong's thesis was titled "Unveiling the Progenitors of Short Gamma-ray Bursts".  Information about the award is available from: https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/dissertation/astrophysics.cfm and a short bio for Dr. Fong is available from: https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/prizes/prizerecipient.cfm?last_nm=Fong&first_nm=Wen-fai&year=2016

Phillip Hopkins 2008, won this year's Warner Prize from the American Astronomical Society for his research on galaxy formation and evolution and the growth of supermassive black holes. This prize is given to recognize an early-career astronomer, who in the past five years has made significant contributions to the field of Astronomy. 

Read More: https://aas.org/grants-and-prizes/helen-b-warner-prize-astronomy

L'oreal Prize to Harvard Astronomy Alumni Sarah Ballard. 

"NEW YORK, Oct. 13, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- L'Oreal USA today announces the five recipients of the 2015 For Women in Science Fellowship, which honors female scientists at critical stages of their career with $60,000 fellowships to advance their postdoctoral research. Celebrating its twelfth year in the U.S., the L'Oreal For Women in Science program has awarded 60 postdoctoral women scientists nearly $3 million in grants. The announcement is being made in conjunction with Ada...

More details and alumni registration: http://alumni.harvard.edu/events/harvard-alumni-night-at-observatory

One current and one former Harvard Astronomy student are featured in Forbes magazine list of 30 under 30 in science. The first is current Harvard student, Henry Lin, (at the ripe age of 19!). The second is a former graduate student, Tony Pan, who work as the principal scientist in a new start-up  company. Avi Loeb is their Harvard advisor.... Read more about One current and one former Harvard Astronomy student are featured in Forbes magazine list of 30 under 30 in science