Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Awards Update

The latest Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Awards competition, which occurred at the 223rd AAS meeting in Washington, DC, earlier this month, was a record-setting event. Nearly 450 student poster authors entered the competition, of which two-thirds were undergraduates, and there were approximately 250 judges! Student posters were evaluated during the morning coffee breaks and afternoon poster sessions all four days of the meeting, not just Monday through Wednesday as in the past, partly because of the record number of posters and partly because of changes in the way posters are being scheduled into science sessions.

As a result of the longer competition, not all judges' scores were in hand by the end of the meeting, and we couldn't announce the winners before everyone went home. The last of the outstanding scores have now come in, so we will be ready to announce the winners in both the undergraduate and graduate-student categories on our website next week.

On behalf of our Society and all of the students who entered the AAS 223 Chambliss competition, I would like to thank our volunteer judges, with a special thanks to those who volunteered onsite to replace judges who got stuck at home due to the bad weather that hit the DC area. I would also like to thank the AAS Executive Office staff who help to make this very important competition such a big success.