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Agency Honor Awards
2024.04.01
Congratulations to the following 660 members for receiving Agency Honor Awards!
Scott Barthelmy: Exceptional Public Service Medal
Koji Mukai: Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal
Regina Caputo: Exceptional Technology Achievement Medal
Elmer Sharp: Exceptional Technology Achievement Medal
Ron Gamble: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Medal
Marc Kuchner: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Medal
Ryan DeRosa: Silver Achievement Medal
PRIME Wide Field Imager Team: Group Achievement Award
SMD Bridge Program Workshop Organizing Committee: Group Achievement Award
XRISM team: Group Silver Achievement Medal
JWST Instrument Commissioning Team: Group Silver Achievement Meda
2022 Robert H. Goddard Award Winners
2022.07.13
Congratulations to all the 660 winners of the Robert H. Goddard awards:
Rita M Sambruna (660) - Diversity & Inclusion and EEO Team
LISA Telescope Team (663) - Engineering
Jonathan P Gardner (665) - Leadership
Kimberly A Weaver (662) - Leadership
Eric R Switzer (665) - Mentoring
Sibasish Laha (661) - Science
Maurice A Leutenegger (662) - Science
Tonia Moira Venters (661) - Science
Ellie Jeffries (660) - Secretarial & Clerical
Travis James Coffroad (662) - Technician
Astronomy Picture of the Day Honored for Outreach by IAU
2022.06.22
Astronomy Picture of the Day has been honored by the International Astronomical Union in the organization's inaugural round of outreach prizes. The website, created and run by Goddard’s Jerry Bonnell and Robert Nemiroff at Michigan Technological University, has served up daily astronomical images for 27 years, is available in 20 languages, and is seen by millions throughout the world. The award will be presented at the IAU General Assembly in Busan, South Korea, in August.
2021 Agency Honor Awards
2022.02.08
NASA announced its 2021 Agency Honor Awards this week. Included are several ASD scientists. Caroline Kilbourne (662) and Joan Centrella (660/retired) have won the Distinguished Service Medal, the Agency’s highest award. Mike Corcoran (662/CUA) has won the Exceptional Public Service Medal. Tom Barclay (667/UMBC) was awarded the Early Career Achievement Medal. Knicole Colon (667), Floyd Stecker (663), Eliahu Dwek (665/retired), and Eleonora Troja (661/UMCP) have won the Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal. The XRISM Resolve Dewar Leak Investigation Team won a Group Achievement Award. Congratulations to all!
Congratulations to Brad Cenko, Awarded the 2022 HEAD Mid-Career Prize
2022.02.01
The 2022 HEAD Mid-Career Prize was awarded to Dr. Brad Cenko "for outstanding leadership, discovery and characterization of high-energy transient phenomena from tidal disruption events, counterparts to gravitational wave mergers, and gamma ray bursts."
Congratulations to the Robert H. Goddard Award Winners from ASD
2022.01.31
Congratulations to ASD staff who were announced this past week as winners of the Robert H. Goddard awards. Individual winners include Knicole Colón for mentoring and Barbara Mattson for outreach. Keith Gendreau was selected for the Award of Merit. The JWST NIRSpec IRS2 Algorithm Team was named a winner of the RHG science award.
First AAS Fellows include ASD Scientists
2020.02.28
The Fellows program of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), the major organization of professional astronomers in North America, was established in 2019 to honor members for their contributions toward the AAS mission of enhancing and sharing humanity's scientific understanding of the universe. The following members of ASD were honored among the first group of AAS Fellows, announced Feb. 25:
Edward Cheng
Alice Harding
Sangeeta Malhotra
Maxim Markevitch
John Mather
William Pence
Tod Strohmayer
Jean Hebb Swank
Kimberly Weaver
Regina Caputo Selected as a Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellow
2019.11.20
Congratulations to Regina Caputo on her selection as a Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellow.
Poster Blowout 2019 is in the books!
2019.02.27
Photos from this year's Poster Blowout are available now. Congratulations to everyone, especially this year's winners!
Gehrels Memorial Meeting
2018.06.06
On May 21-22, 2018, over 100 colleagues from around the globe gathered at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the life and career of Neil Gehrels at a memorial symposium. Talks spanned the range of Neil’s scientific interests (cosmic rays, gamma-ray bursts, gravitational waves) and programmatic roles (Compton, Swift, Fermi, and WFIRST), as well as personal reminiscences of a universally admired mentor, colleague, and friend. We were also pleased to publicly announce that, as a result of a generous donation from the Gehrels family, the nationally recognized prize doctoral position offered by the Joint Space-Science Institute will be renamed the Neil Gehrels Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship.
The meeting’s webpage, including talks, can be found here:
https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/conferences/gehrels_memorial
Poster Blowout 2018
2018.02.05
Note from the Director:
I would like to thank the Director’s Science Committee for putting on an amazingly successful event where scientists and engineers across Goddard shared their work and made new contacts. The interdisciplinary interactions were especially exciting and crossed all four science disciplines.
Best,
Colleen
Click the title of this news item or the image below for more images from the poster party.
Congratulations to Charles Bennett, Gary Hinshaw, Norman Jarosik, Lyman Page Jr., David Spergel and the WMAP Science Team for winning the 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
2017.12.03
Congratulations to Charles Bennett, Gary Hinshaw, Norman Jarosik, Lyman Page Jr., David Spergel and the WMAP Science Team for winning the 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics on Dec. 3! The citation reads: “For detailed maps of the early universe that greatly improved our knowledge of the evolution of the cosmos and the fluctuations that seeded the formation of galaxies.” The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was founded in 2012 by Yuri Milner to recognize those individuals who have made profound contributions to human knowledge. The team also includes:
Chris Barnes,
Olivier Doré,
Joanna Dunkley,
Ben Gold,
Michael Greason,
Mark Halpern,
Robert Hill,
Al Kogut,
Eiichiro Komatsu,
David Larson,
Michele Limon,
Stephan Meyer,
Michael Nolta,
Nils Odegard,
Hiranya Peiris,
Kendrick Smith,
Greg Tucker,
Licia Verde,
Janet Weiland,
Ed Wollack, and
Ned Wright
Congratulations to the many ASD members who were involved in the exciting gravitational wave and electromagnetic counterpart discovery of merging neutron stars, and the subsequent media activity around the discovery!
2017.10.23
Scientists:
Scott Barthelmy - Gamma-ray Coordinates Network system
Eric Burns - Fermi gamma ray burst study
Jordan Camp – GSFC LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) PI
Brad Cenko - Swift PI
Tito Dal Canton - Gravitational wave localization maps; Virgo, joint LIGO/Virgo-Fermi-GBM study
Amy Lien - Swift follow up study
Julie McEnery - Fermi Project Scientist
Frank Marshall - Swift follow up study
Judy Racusin - Fermi gamma ray burst study, Swift follow-up study
Leo Singer - Gravitational wave localization maps, GROWTH follow-up study, joint LIGO/Virgo-Fermi-GBM study
Eleonora Troja - Chandra & HST follow-up, Swift follow-up study
Communications Team:
Elizabeth Ferrara - Fermi social media
Barb Mattson - Traditional & social media coordination
Sara Mitchell - Social media coordination & content creation
Brian Monroe - Animator
Frank Reddy - Cross-organizational coordination & writer for nasa.gov press release
Claire Saravia - Live shots
Amber Straughn - ASD Associate Director
Dewayne Washington - HQ/GSFC coordination
Scott Wiessinger - Video & multimedia
Congratulations to the Astrophysics Science Division scientists who are PIs and Co-Is on the recently announced Astrophysics Missions of Opportunity and Medium-Class Explorer missions!
2017.08.09
- ISS-TAO (Transient Astrophysics Observer on the ISS), a Mission of Opportunity proposal submitted to the 2016 Explorer opportunity, was selected for a Phase A study. ISS-TAO team members include PI Jordan Camp (663), Scott Barthelmy (661), Rob Petre (662), Judy Racusin (661), Brad Cenko (661), Frank Marshall (661), Jeremy Schnittman (663), Andy Ptak (662), and Amy Lien (661), Leo Singer (661), and Tod Strohmeyer (662). ISS-TAO is a wide-field X-ray transient detector aboard the International Space Station that would observe numerous events per year of X-ray transients related to compact objects. The mission’s primary goal is the detection of X-ray counterparts to gravitational waves produced by neutron stars merging with black holes and other neutron stars. Other targets would be supernova shocks, neutron star bursts, and high redshift gamma-ray bursts.
- Rob Petre (662), Andy Ptak (662), Alan Smale (660), and Lynne Valencic (662) are co-Is on Arcus (PI Randall Smith, SAO), selected as a concept study for a Medium-Class Explorer mission. Arcus would study stars, galaxies and clusters of galaxies using high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy to characterize the interactions between these objects and the diffuse million-degrees gas that surrounds and permeates them.
- Alan Smale (660) and Terri Brandt (661) are collaborators on COSI-X (PI Steve Boggs/UCB), selected as a concept study for an Explorer Mission of Opportunity. COSI-X is a balloon-borne, wide-field-of-view telescope designed to survey the gamma-ray sky at 0.2-5 MeV, performing high-resolution spectroscopy, wide-field imaging, and polarization measurements. COSI-X would map gamma-rays from antimatter around the Milky Way's center, as well as from newly-formed radioactive elements in the debris of stellar explosions.
Goddard Center Director Remarks on Passing of Neil Gehrels
2017.02.11
"Our center has lost a dear friend and astronomy pioneer, and his spirit will always live on in our work, said Goddard Center Director Chris Scolese. "Those of us who were fortunate to work with Neil know of his unwavering enthusiasm for science and unselfish generosity in mentoring others."
Neil Gehrels Awarded $1M 2017 Dan David Prize
2017.02.10
Neil Gehrels was posthumously awarded the $1 million 2017 Dan David Prize for "being the principal investigator of NASA's Swift Gamma Ray Burst Mission, which has transformed our view of the transient and variable sky in gamma-rays and in X-rays." Neil is one of three laureates announced this year in the field of astronomy. The Dan David Prize is headquartered at Tel Aviv University.
2017 Rossi Prize: Gabriela González and LIGO Scientific Collaboration
2017.01.25
The 2017 Rossi Prize has been awarded to Gabriela González at Louisiana State University and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration for "the first direct detections of gravitational waves, for the discovery of merging black hole binaries, and beginning the new era of gravitational-wave astronomy." The collaboration includes more than 1,000 scientists from more than 90 institutions around the world. ASD members are:
Scott Barthlemy
Jordan Camp
John Cannizzo
Tito Dal Canton
Neil Gehrels
Leo Singer
Science Jamboree event photos
2016.08.04
The 2016 Science Jamboree was a great success! A collection of 50 photos from the event are available now.
Neil Gehrels Elected to an Honorary Fellowship in the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS)
2016.01.08
Neil Gehrels has been elected to an Honorary Fellowship in the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). Neil has enjoyed a long association with Astronomers in the United Kingdom who are partners in the Swift mission. In his role as the PI of Swift, Neil created these very successful partnerships.
Mark Clampin Named Director of the Astrophysics Science Division
2015.11.06
Please welcome Mark Clampin into the key leadership position of Director of the Astrophysics Science Division. Mark came to Goddard in 2003 from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Mark has been serving as the James Webb Space Telescope Observatory (JWST) Project Scientist at Goddard since 2003, providing science oversight of the Observatory's design through the initial phases of integration. From 2012 to 2014 he also served as the Chief Technologist of the Cosmic Origins and Physics of the Cosmos Program Offices. During the last year, he participated in the development of the Advanced Large Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST) concept as a Senior Scientist. Mark assumes this position with a broad range of experience covering the scientific, technical and programmatic breadth of the division’s responsibilities. We are delighted he is accepting this new challenge and we look forward to working with him as he leads the outstanding team here in the Astrophysics Science Division.
Sylvain Guiriec wins the 2015 IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Astrophysics
2015.09.22
The 2015 IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Astrophysics was awarded to Sylvain Guiriec for his “insightful and innovative contributions towards understanding the nature of Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) prompt emission, in particular the establishment of multi-component spectra, and the discovery of a new Peak Energy – Luminosity relation showing that GRBs can be used as standard candles and thereby as unique cosmological probes.”
Klumpke-Roberts Award Winners
2015.07.20
The Klumpke-Roberts Award of the ASP is awarded annually to an individual or individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy. Jerry Bonnell (661) and Bob Nemiroff (Michigan Tech) were selected for their work on Astronomy Picture of the Day.
Honorary Degree Awarded to Julie McEnery
2015.06.22
On June 16, 2015, Dr. Julie McEnery was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science from University College, Dublin. The award was given for leadership in Gamma-ray astrophysics and for bridging the divide between the ground and space-based gamma-ray communities.
Liz Hays Elected as a New Fellow of the American Physical Society
2014.12.05
Please congratulate Liz Hays for being elected as a new Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). This is quite an honor -- only 0.5% of APS members are elected to be Fellows each year.
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