The Gruber Foundation Fellowships 2023 have been awarded to Mohit Bhardwaj, Marina Bianchin and Pooneh Nazari.

Each year the Gruber Foundation, in collaboration with the International Astronomical Union (IAU), funds a US$75 000 fellowship programme for promising young astronomers. As last year, the Selection Committee decided to award this year’s fellowship jointly to three outstanding candidates, each receiving US$25 000.

Mohit Bhardwaj is an Indian astronomer who received his PhD in 2022 from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Since September 2022 he has been a MacWilliams Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA. As a core member of the CHIME/FRB collaboration, his research focuses on uncovering the origins of fast radio bursts and using them to probe the intracluster medium. He plans to use the grant to pay for visits to collaborators, conference attendance, and publication costs.

Marina Bianchin is a Brazilian astronomer who received her PhD in 2022 from the Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil. Since October 2022 she has been a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, Irvine, USA. Her research focuses on studying molecular gas outflows with JWST and OSIRIS, with the aim of determining the mass loading in the interstellar medium and developing a classification of the nuclear sources. She plans to use the grant mainly for conference attendance, publication fees, and computer equipment.

Pooneh Nazari is an Iranian astronomer who will receive her PhD from Leiden University in the Netherlands in 2023. In October 2023 she will join the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany for a Postdoctoral Fellowship. She will use ALMA and JWST data combined with theoretical models to study the relationship between planetary composition and protostellar evolution. She plans to use the fellowship money to visit collaborators, to organise a workshop, and to offer summer projects to female students from the Middle East.

IAU President-elect Willy Benz said: “The committee was impressed by the exceptional quality of all the candidates who applied, and we wish to congratulate all applicants on their remarkable achievements. We look forward to their continued success in their respective professional endeavours in the future.”

More Information

The IAU is the international astronomical organisation that brings together more than 12 000 active professional astronomers from more than 100 countries worldwide. Its mission is to promote and safeguard astronomy in all its aspects, including research, communication, education and development, through international cooperation. The IAU also serves as the internationally recognised authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies and the surface features on them. Founded in 1919, the IAU is the world's largest professional body for astronomers.

Links

• The IAU–Gruber Foundation Fellowship Programme

Contacts

Lars Lindberg Christensen
IAU Director of Communications
Cell: +1 520 461 0433/+49 173 38 72 621
Email: lars.christensen@noirlab.edu