26 December 2018

The 2019 AAS Doxsey Travel Prize Results Are In!

Gina Brissenden American Astronomical Society (AAS)

The Rodger Doxsey Travel Prize — established through the support of his father, John Doxsey, and other friends, family, and colleagues — provides graduate students and recent PhD recipients/postdocs within one year of receiving or receipt of their PhD a monetary prize to enable the oral presentation of their dissertation research at a winter meeting of the AAS. The first awards were made for the 217th AAS meeting in Seattle, WA, in January 2011.

There were 127 entries for the 2019 Rodger Doxsey Travel Prize competition, out of the 156 total oral dissertation abstracts submitted for the 233rd AAS meeting in Seattle, WA. Choosing only a small number of these to win the prize from among so many worthy entrants was not easy — especially since our judges have noted that the abstracts are just getting better and better!

In all, 10 Doxsey 2019 prize winners and 5 honorable mentions were selected. All of them will each receive complimentary registration for the Seattle meeting. In addition, the prize winners will receive a modest stipend to reimburse some of their travel expenses. Prize winners and honorable mentions came from a diverse group of institutions and geographical locations.

Following are the 2019 Doxsey prize winners and honorable mentions — please tell them congratulations if you see them at the meeting!

Winners (PhD Institution)
  • Seunghwan Lim (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
  • Cassandra Lochhaas (Ohio State University)
  • Ramesh Mainali (Steward Observatory, University of Arizona)
  • Bryan Terrazas (University of Michigan)
  • Alexander Wise (University of Delaware)
  • Anna Ogorzalek (Stanford University)
  • Joel Zinn (Ohio State University)
  • Jennifer Bergner (Harvard University)
  • Bin Ren (Johns Hopkins University)
  • Jianwei Lyu (Steward Observatory, University of Arizona)
Honorable Mentions (PhD Institution)
  • David Vartanyan (Princeton University)
  • Stephanie Ho (University of California, Santa Barbara)
  • Wenyang Li (Brown University)
  • Yashashree Jadhav (Rochester Institute of Technology)
  • John Biersteker (Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Much gratitude goes out to this year’s volunteer Doxsey Prize judges for their earnest efforts:
  • Debbie Elmegreen (Vassar)
  • Chris Lintott (University of Oxford))
  • Geoff Mathews (University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa)