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The Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Awards are given to recognize exemplary research by undergraduate and graduate students who present at one of the poster sessions at the meetings of the AAS. Awardees are honored with a Chambliss medal or, in the case of honorable mention, a certificate. Five graduate and undergraduate students from the Astronomy & Astrophysics Department won awards or honorable mentions.

Asst. Prof. Edwin Kite discusses challenges the Perseverance Rover must overcome to land on Mars on FOX 32.

Yuanyuan Zhang, an astrophysicist with the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, led a study with Dark Energy Survey data of how light from inside galaxy clusters may be linked with dark matter.

Experimental cosmologist and Assoc. Prof. McMahon and his students developed a new metamaterials-based antireflection coating for the silicon lenses used in cameras that capture the oldest light in the universe.

New Scientist filmed an interview with Dan Hooper: What happened at the big bang? The search for dark matter, cosmic inflation, and other mysteries from the beginning of time.

Random twists of place: How quiet is quantum space-time at the Planck scale? Prof. Craig Hogan shares an update on the reconfigured Fermilab Holometer.

Ceramic chips inside meteorites hint at wild days of the early solar system. Using complex equipment in Nicolas Dauphas' Origins Lab, including a one-of-a-kind patented purification system that the team developed, Justin Hu measured the isotopes for eight different elements inside the chips.

Prof. Josh Frieman has been awarded an American Astronomical Society Fellowship in recognition of his significant theoretical contributions to inflationary cosmology and dark energy theory and his contributions to optical surveys.

Mingyue Wang grew up in Hangzhou, China. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Fordham University. This is her second quarter as a student in the Financial Mathematics master’s program. She is currently taking Portfolio Theory & Risk Management, Numerical Methods of Option Pricing and Hedging, Stochastic Calculus, and Machine Learning in Finance.

Prof. Richard Kron's legacy includes helping to conceive and lead one of the most influential projects to map the sky, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, as well as the creation of the astrophysics major at UChicago and the project to digitize and explore the scientific potential of 100-year-old photographic images of the sky from the Yerkes Observatory. 

The PSD Fellowship Challenge to support incoming graduate students in 2020-2021 surpassed its goal to raise a total of $3.75 million. Thank you to all our supporters!

Geoscientist Elisabeth Moyer joined FOX 32 news to explain the environmental impact of the Keystone XL Pipeline and what the president's decision will mean for renewable energy proponents.

Computer scientist Marshini Chetty works to bridge the gap between science and humanity

Prof. Joshua A. Frieman and Prof. Emeritus Eugene Parker named Fellows of the American Astronomical Society. Prof. Frieman was recognized for his significant theoretical work on inflationary cosmology and dark energy and for pioneering contributions to optical survey science. Prof. Parker was named a Legacy Fellow for pioneering contributions to solar astrophysics.

A Physics student in the McMahon lab, Grace Chesmore, led the optical measurements of new metamaterial tiles to improve the sensitivity of large telescopes at SimonsObservatory. This discovery may yield insights into how the universe began.