28 January 2016

Chambliss Student Poster Awards for AAS 227

Gina Brissenden American Astronomical Society (AAS)

The latest Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Awards poster competition, which occurred last week during the 227th AAS meeting in Kissimmee, Florida, was quite exhilarating. More than 200 students entered the competition, of which about 60% were undergraduates, and there were approximately 200 judges! Student posters were evaluated during the morning coffee breaks and afternoon poster sessions Tuesday through Thursday of the meeting.

I had the opportunity to interact with many of the students before and after their posters were judged. Students generally expressed excitement about being in the completion, but also expressed how nice their judges were. The many judges I spoke with also expressed how much they looked forward to meeting the Chambliss students and talking with them about their work. They also expressed that being a Chambliss judge and talking with students about their work was a very rewarding and gratifying experience. So, if you haven't signed up to judge student posters in the past, I encourage you to do so in the future—the more judges we have, the fewer posters each judge is responsible for judging! The next opportunity will be at the 228th AAS meeting in San Diego, California, in June 2016.

Here are the results from Kissimmee:

Graduate Student Medal Winners

  • Tahlia DeMaio (University of Florida)
  • Andrew Riddle (University of Texas at Austin)
  • Michele Silverstein (Georgia State University)
  • Jason Wang (University of California, Berkeley)

Graduate Student Honorable Mentions

  • Alyssa Barlis (University of Pennsylvania)
  • Owen Boberg (Indiana University)
  • Erica Gonzales (University of Notre Dame)
  • Meridith Joyce (Dartmouth College)
  • Rosalie McGurk (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy)
  • Natalie Sanchez (Fisk University)
  • Amy Steele (University of Maryland at College Park)

Undergraduate Medal Winners

  • Eryn Cangi (Northwestern University, University of Oregon)
  • Patrick Drew (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
  • Cameron Lemley (Columbia University)
  • Franklin Marsh (Pomona College)
  • Moiya McTier (Harvard College)
  • Ellianna Schwab (The City College of New York)
  • Brent Shapiro-Albert (Union College)
  • Brianna Thomas (Howard University)

Undergraduate Honorable Mentions

  • Gillian Beltz-Mohrmann (Wellesley College)
  • Carl Fields (Arizona State University)
  • Platon Karpov (Stony Brook University)
  • Jamila Pegues (Princeton University)
  • William Waalkes (University of Michigan)

Congratulations, all! On behalf of our Society and all of the students who entered the AAS 227 Chambliss competition, I would like to thank our volunteer judges, with a special thanks to those who volunteered onsite to replace judges who had last-minute schedule changes. I would also like to thank the AAS Executive Office staff who help to make this very important competition such a big success.