28 November 2018

Beth Brown Memorial Award Winners for 2018

Richard Fienberg

Richard Fienberg American Astronomical Society

NSBP LogoThe AAS supports a prize program at the annual meeting of the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP): the Beth Brown Memorial Awards. They honor the memory of a vigorous and engaged young astronomer who passed away at age 39 from a pulmonary embolism. Beth Brown earned her bachelor's degree from Howard University and, in 1998, became the first African American woman to earn a PhD from the University of Michigan's astronomy department. She died in 2008 just before beginning a new position as Assistant Director for Science Communication at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Although her time working in the professional astronomical community was short, she had a significant impact on our discipline, not least by serving as a role model for many students from underrepresented groups.

Three awards are given: best poster presentations by an undergraduate and a graduate student, and best oral presentation by either an undergraduate or a graduate student. At its meeting in Columbus, Ohio, earlier this month, the recipients of the 2018 awards were announced:

  • Best Undergraduate Poster Presentation: Marika Edwards (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), "Developing a Gravitational Microlensing Generator to Determine Efficiency in Detecting Gravitational Effects of Primordial Black Holes in the Milky Way Dark Matter Halo"
  • Best Graduate Poster Presentation: Romy Rodriguez-Martinez (Ohio State University), "Finding Flares on M Dwarfs with ASAS-SN"
  • Best Oral Presentation: Eileen Gonzales (City University of New York Graduate Center, American Museum of Natural History, Hunter College), "Is TRAPPIST-1 a Unique M-Dwarf Host Star?"

In addition, the judges — members of the NSBP's Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASTRO) Committee, which often includes representatives of the AAS Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astronomy (CSMA) — decided to award an Honorable Mention to graduate student Sinclaire Manning (University of Texas, Austin) for her talk entitled "Radio Morphologies of Dust Obscured Starbursts in the SuperCLASS Field." She will receive a framed certificate.

We provide each of the three award winners with complimentary AAS membership for one year along with complimentary registration to an upcoming AAS or Division meeting to present their research, plus up to $1,000 to cover the cost of food, lodging, and travel.

The winner of the oral-presentation award also gets invited to give talks at both Howard University and the University of Michigan, focusing on their path into research astronomy. The AAS covers the costs of food, lodging, and travel to Howard University and covers the cost of airfare to Michigan, while the University of Michigan pays the winner's food and lodging expenses.