Congratulations to the AAS 248 Chambliss Student Award Winners

  Student researchers from across the astronomy community presented their work in the Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Award poster competition at AAS 248 in Pasadena, California, in June 2026. We are pleased to announce the recipients of this year’s awards! 

Here are the Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Award winners from AAS 248:

Graduate Award Winners

• Julia Francescutti (San Diego State University)
• Nicolas Lopez (George Washington University)
• Vaishnav V. Rao (University of Michigan)

Undergraduate Award Winners

• Isidro Pena (University of California, Berkeley)
• Jonathan Kasper (Skidmore College)
• Marco Cheng (University of California, Irvine)

Graduate Honorable Mentions

• Dimple Sarnaaik (Carnegie Science Observatories)
• Isabella Sanford (Southeastern Universities Research Association)
• Malina Desai (MIT)
• Yasmine Meziani (California Institute of Technology)

Undergraduate Honorable Mentions

• Arian Moghni (University of California, Santa Cruz)
• Aryan Gupta (Princeton University)
• David R. Fulcher (University of Florida)
• Rasmieh Abdelkarim (University of California, Irvine)
• Rishika Porandla (Princeton University)

Congratulations, all!

On behalf of the AAS, I would like to thank all of the many, many member volunteer judges who gave their time and care during the online and in-person judging. A special thank-you goes out to volunteers Dawn Davies, Vishal Kasliwal, Shanil Virani, who were of critical help in coordinating the poster competition. All of your help was needed to ensure a successful poster competition.

Photographs from the Chambliss poster presentations at the meeting may be viewed in this photo gallery.