AAS Member Named 2016 Guggenheim Fellow

This announcement is adapted from a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation press release and accompanying information.

On 5 April 2016, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awarded 175 Guggenheim Fellowships to 178 scholars, artists, and scientists, including AAS member Dr. Feryal Özel, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Arizona. The fellowship recipients were selected from nearly 3,000 applicants and represent 50 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 71 different academic institutions, 27 states and the District of Columbia, and two Canadian provinces.

Dr. Özel, who was an invited speaker at the 227th AAS meeting in Kissimmee, Florida, has made pioneering contributions to the physics of neutron stars and black holes, as well as to the co-evolution of black holes and galaxies in the early Universe. She is carrying out the first accurate measurements of the neutron star radii that constrain the ultradense matter equation of state. Based on her work on accretion flows, she has made the first size predictions of the images of nearby supermassive black holes at different wavelengths. During her fellowship year, Dr. Ӧzel will carry out high resolution studies of compact objects, including the surfaces of neutron stars and the event horizons of black holes.

Since its establishment in 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has granted more than $334 million in fellowships to over 18,000 individuals, among whom are scores of Nobel laureates, Fields Medalists, Turing Award winners, poets laureate, members of the various national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, and other important, internationally recognized honors. For more information on the Fellows and their projects, see the Foundation’s website.