2025 NHFP Fellows

Host Institution: Carnegie Observatories

Proposal Title: Revealing Massive Galaxy Formation Using Chemical Abundances

Aliza Beverage grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and completed her bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in 2019. She is currently pursuing her doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Professor Mariska Kriek and is set to graduate in summer 2025.

Aliza’s research explores the formation and chemical enrichment of distant massive galaxies. Using ultra-deep spectroscopic observations from Keck and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), her thesis provided the first statistical look at the chemical properties of quiescent galaxies beyond the low redshift universe. These chemical fingerprints preserve a fossil record of past star formation and have enabled new insights into the rapid formation and mysterious quenching of massive galaxies.

As a Hubble Fellow, Aliza will integrate chemical evolution predictions into stellar population models to achieve self-consistent measurements of chemical enrichment and star-formation histories. By applying these models to her upcoming ultra-deep JWST spectra of distant quiescent galaxies, she will shed light on the earliest and most uncertain epoch of galaxy growth, decipher quenching mechanisms, and uncover the origins of the chemical elements in distant galaxies.

Host Institution: Columbia University

Proposal Title: Galaxies, Shapes and Weak Lensing in the Effective Field Theory of Large-Scale Structure

Stephen Chen was born in Queens, New York, and grew up in Taipei, Taiwan, before returning to the U.S. for high school. He obtained his undergraduate degree in physics at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), where he worked on high-redshift absorptions lines with Professor Robert Simcoe. Stephen then moved out west to the University of California, Berkeley, where he obtained his PhD in physics under the supervision of Professor Martin White in 2022, and was supported in part by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. He has since been a postdoctoral member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

Stephen is a cosmologist whose research covers both building state-of-the-art theoretical models and analyzing large cosmological datasets to make precision measurements of fundamental physics. While his work covers a broad range of cosmological observations, Stephen has been particularly interested in understanding the three-dimensional clustering of galaxies in spectroscopic surveys through the lens of effective field theory. As part of this work, he served as a core member in the main analyses of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument collaboration, including the measurement of cosmic expansion through baryon acoustic oscillations. More recently, Stephen has been thinking about extending these analytical techniques to study the weak lensing of galaxy shapes. Upcoming experiments like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will provide unprecedented measurements of this lensing signal, for which he hopes to develop novel analytical methods from first principles to study physics ranging from the mass of neutrinos to the nature of dark energy.

Host Institution: Harvard University

Proposal Title: Early giants in context: How could galaxies in the first billion years grow so rapidly?

Born in Scotland, Anna de Graaff grew up primarily in the Netherlands. She moved back to obtain her undergraduate and master's degrees in physics and astronomy at the University of Edinburgh. Anna then went on to pursue a PhD in astronomy at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where she worked with Marijn Franx on the structural evolution of galaxies across cosmic time.

Anna currently holds a prize postdoctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. While there, she played a leading role in the design of large spectroscopic surveys with the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument onboard the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), revealing galaxies and black holes in the distant universe in unprecedented detail. She has also led the development of novel modeling tools to analyze these exciting new data.

Anna's research focuses on the formation and evolution of galaxies across cosmic time and she aims to understand how the most massive galaxies in the local universe could grow so large. To do so, she performs a combination of kinematic and stellar population modeling to spectroscopic observations, and makes detailed comparisons to theoretical predictions. As a Hubble Fellow, Anna will apply these techniques to the thousands of spectra obtained in her JWST program Red Unknowns: Bright Infrared Extragalactic Survey (RUBIES) to tackle a major puzzle presented by recent JWST observations: the extremely rapid growth of galaxies in the first billion years of the universe.

Host Institution: California Institute of Technology

Proposal Title: Superconducting On-Chip Spectrometers for High-Redshift Astrophysics and Cosmology

Karia Dibert is originally from North Carolina. She completed her bachelor’s in mathematics and physics at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 2018, and her PhD in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago in 2024. While there, she worked with Brad Benson and the South Pole Telescope (SPT) group on forecasting, detector development, testing, and analysis for the future SPT-3G+ camera and the recently deployed SPT-SLIM receiver. She was supported by the Department of Energy’s Graduate Instrumentation Research Award and the William Rainey Harper Dissertation Fellowship.

After helping to deploy the SPT-SLIM instrument, Karia is currently wintering over at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, where she will operate and maintain the South Pole Telescope for the 2025 Austral winter. She will begin her Hubble Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in late 2025.

At Caltech, Karia will work with Matt Bradford’s group to develop novel superconducting detectors and instrumentation for upcoming experiments. She intends to design and create dense arrays of high-resolution on-chip spectrometers that span the millimeter/submillimeter range. These instruments will map atomic and molecular emission lines that trace large-scale structure and star formation processes throughout cosmic history.

Host Institution: UC Santa Cruz

Proposal Title: Mapping the Formation, Migration, and Thermal Evolution of Giant Planets with Direct Imaging and Astrometry

Kyle Franson grew up in Midland, Michigan. He completed his bachelor’s in physics at the University of Michigan in 2019. Kyle is currently a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin working with Professor Brendan Bowler and will finish his PhD in astronomy in July 2025.

Kyle’s research lives in the intersection of two methods for detecting exoplanets: direct imaging and astrometry. As a graduate student, he led a large exoplanet imaging program targeting stars with small astrometric accelerations between Hipparcos and Gaia that point to the presence of wide-orbiting giant planets. This high-efficiency survey produced exciting discoveries including AF Lep b, the lowest-mass imaged exoplanet with a direct-mass measurement. As a Sagan Fellow, Kyle will build on the growing synergy between exoplanet imaging and astrometry to address fundamental questions about the formation, migration, and atmospheres of giant exoplanets. He plans to launch a new direct imaging search for planets around the most promising accelerating stars revealed by Gaia DR4. Ultimately, this effort aims to significantly expand the small sample of imaged exoplanets with direct-mass measurements.

Host Institution: University of Maryland

Proposal Title: Local Group Galaxies in Disequilibrium; Building New Frameworks to Constrain the Nature of Dark Matter

Nico Garavito is interested in understanding the ongoing interactions between galaxies in the Local Group and what these interactions can reveal about dark matter. 

During his PhD, Nico worked with Professor Gurtina Besla at the University of Arizona, simulating and predicting how the Milky Way’s dark matter halo is being deformed by the passage of its largest satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). These deformations have now been detected, thanks to the precise proper motions provided by the Gaia satellite.

As a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) at the Flatiron Institute in New York, Nico studied the consequences of the ongoing interaction between the Milky Way (MW) and the LMC. Using both constrained and cosmological simulations, he examined several effects of this interaction, including its impact on the orbits of other satellite galaxies, the stars in the stellar halo, stellar streams, dark matter subhalos, and the detection of dark matter in direct detection experiments.

Before joining the University of Maryland, Nico will work with Professor Kate Daniel at the University of Arizona. As an Einstein Fellow at the University of Maryland, he will collaborate with Professor Benedikt Diemer to study the response of dark matter halos in different dark matter models.

Nico completed his bachelor's degree in physics at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá and earned a master's degree in physics from Universidad de los Andes, also in Bogotá.

Host Institution: University of Colorado Boulder

Proposal Title: Beyond Mg and Fe: Exploring Detailed Nucleosynthetic Patterns

Emily Griffith grew up on a farm in Luckey, Ohio. She earned her bachelor’s in physics and theatre at Grinnell College in Iowa, in 2017. In 2022, Emily received her PhD in astronomy from Ohio State University, where she was advised by David Weinberg and Jennifer Johnson. She currently holds a National Science Foundation (NSF) Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Colorado Boulder and is a member of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. 

Emily’s research strives to determine the astronomical origins of the elements on the periodic table and constrain how our galaxy evolved chemically with time. While the large amplitude features of the Milky Way’s abundance distributions have been well characterized in the last decade, much information remains in the detailed, small amplitude structure. As a Hubble Fellow, Emily will leverage data from spectroscopic stellar surveys and boutique analyses of high-resolution spectra along with theoretical models of galactic chemical evolution and supernovae yields to decode the details of galaxy’s nucleosynthesis.

Host Institution: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Proposal Title: Nuclear Transients in the Golden Era of Time-Domain Astronomy

Jason Hinkle grew up near Baltimore, Maryland. He attended the University of Maryland, College Park where he earned a double bachelor’s in physics and astronomy in 2019, both with high honors. In April 2025, he will complete his PhD in astronomy at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, advised by Benjamin Shappee and supported by a NASA Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) grant.

Jason’s dissertation research explored the diversity of accretion behaviors occurring on supermassive black holes (SMBHs) from a multi-wavelength perspective. In addition to studying known phenomena such as tidal disruption events (TDEs), he has helped establish and investigate new groups of exotic accretion-powered transients, including ambiguous nuclear transients and extreme nuclear transients. Jason has also advised several undergraduate students on projects ranging from stellar flares to active galactic nucleus variability.

As an Einstein Fellow, Jason aims to leverage upcoming revolutionary time-domain surveys, such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, to expand the viability of nuclear transients as probes of SMBHs. Jason plans to use repeating partial TDEs to access the earliest phases of TDE emission, double the number of TDEs and ANTs with analyzed ultraviolet spectra, and extend transient probes of SMBHs to lower and higher masses. His work will cement nuclear transients as reliable probes of SMBHs across a wide range of masses and redshifts.

Host Institution: Columbia University

Proposal Title: The Anthropology of Merging Stars

Viraj Karambelkar grew up in the city of Pune in western India. He completed his bachelor’s in engineering physics and mathematics from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 2019. He is currently a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), working with Mansi Kasliwal, and will complete his PhD in 2025. 

Viraj’s PhD research has centered on improving our understanding of merging stars, merging white dwarfs, and merging neutron stars. Using a range of optical and infrared time-domain surveys, he has conducted systematic searches for the explosive, variable, and dusty outcomes of these cosmic mergers, leveraging them as probes of stellar processes, gravitational wave sources, and cosmic dust. He developed the transient-detection pipeline for the new infrared Wide-Field Infrared Transient Explorer (WINTER) surveyor at Palomar Observatory, and has led observing programs with the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope.

As a Hubble Fellow, Viraj will use the exciting landscape of upcoming surveys, including the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, NASA’s SPHEREx mission, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, to vastly expand the limited sample of stellar mergers and study them in unprecedented detail. His work will focus on using these discoveries to constrain the evolution of binary stars that eventually become gravitational wave sources, and quantify the impact of these mergers on the cosmic dust budget.

Host Institution: Northwestern University

Proposal Title: Determining the Astrophysical Origins of White-Dwarf Supernovae with JWST Infrared Spectroscopy

Lindsey Kwok grew up under dark night skies in Grand Junction, Colorado. She earned her bachelor’s in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2017 and taught high school physics for two years. Lindsey earned her doctorate from Rutgers University in 2024, where she worked with Professor Saurabh W. Jha on JWST observations of exploding white dwarfs and was supported by a NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) grant. She is currently a CIERA Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University and will continue there as a Hubble Fellow.

Lindsey is the principal investigator of several James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) programs exploring the near- and mid-infrared diversity of the white dwarf supernova zoo. She leverages unique mid-infrared spectral signatures to understand the progenitor star systems and explosion physics that produce both “normal” (i.e., cosmologically useful) type Ia supernovae and the growing population of peculiar white-dwarf supernova subclasses. As a Hubble Fellow, Lindsey will investigate their panchromatic (optical, near-infrared, and mid-infrared) spectral evolution from early to late times to constrain properties of their ejected material and strongly test models for their origins across a vast wavelength range. Lindsey will use the growing sample of JWST observations of white dwarf supernovae to improve our understanding of the population as a whole and more securely link progenitor and explosion channels to the observed variety of white dwarf supernova subclasses.

Host Institution: University of California, Berkeley

Proposal Title: AGB Stars in the Era of NIR Astronomy: New Probes of Cosmology and Galaxy Evolution

Abby Lee grew up in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She earned a bachelor’s in physics at the University of Pennsylvania in 2019. She will complete her PhD in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago in May 2025. Abby was advised by Professor Wendy Freedman and supported during her doctoral work by a NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) grant. Abby will complete her Hubble Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley.

Abby’s dissertation research focused on measuring the expansion rate of the universe using extragalactic distance ladders. During her PhD, Abby tested a new standard candle based on carbon-rich AGB stars, called the JAGB method, using ground- and space-based near-infrared observations. Abby also worked on pioneering techniques to measure the star formation histories (SFHs) of nearby galaxies from only their resolved AGB stellar populations to better understand galaxy formation and evolution.

As a Hubble Fellow, Abby aims to use near-infrared data of AGB stars to address pressing questions about cosmic expansion and galaxy evolution. She plans to provide unprecedented empirical constraints on hierarchical galaxy assembly by measuring the SFHs of nearby galaxies using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Euclid mission, and upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope observations of AGB stars. She also plans to use JWST data of JAGB stars to better understand the Hubble tension, one of the most critical issues in modern cosmology.

Host Institution: New York University

Proposal Title: Repeating Nuclear Transients: Probes of Supermassive Black Holes and Their Environments

Itai Linial was born and raised in Jerusalem, Israel. He completed his master’s in physics in 2017 and PhD in physics in 2022 at the Hebrew University, where his advisor was Professor Re’em Sari. Itai is currently a prize postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University and the Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Advanced Study. He also received the IAU/Gruber postdoctoral fellowship and the Rothschild Fellowship, both in 2022.

Itai is a theoretical astrophysicist with broad interests that span stellar dynamics, high-energy transients, and shock physics. As an Einstein Fellow, Itai will study the broad landscape of high-energy transients occurring in centers of galaxies near supermassive black holes. His research aims to harness current and future observations of repeating nuclear transients as powerful probes of black hole properties, accretion flows, and the stellar dynamics in their vicinity. This work will leverage the expected wave of discoveries from upcoming time-domain surveys, including the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and the Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite (ULTRASAT), which are poised to detect thousands of nuclear transients in the coming years.

Host Institution: Northwestern University

Proposal Title: From Glimmering Jewels to Cosmic Ubiquity: Unraveling the Origins of FRBs

Originally from Scotland, Kenzie Nimmo completed her undergraduate and master's at the University of Glasgow before earning her PhD from the University of Amsterdam and ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, in 2022. During her PhD working with Professor Jason Hessels, she developed novel techniques to probe the origins of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) — enigmatic millisecond-duration radio flashes from other galaxies. By probing FRBs on small spatial and temporal scales, her work provided critical details that shaped our understanding of their progenitors and the extreme physical processes that generate them.

Currently, Kenzie is a Kavli Fellow at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), where she joined the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) FRB Collaboration. There, she has helped build CHIME Outriggers, a project to turn the world-leading FRB finding telescope, CHIME, into a very long baseline interferometric array capable of pinpointing FRBs to their local environments.

As an Einstein Fellow, Kenzie will leverage the large sample of FRBs identified by the CHIME Outriggers to explore their local environments, revealing the extreme astrophysical objects powering these mysterious transients. By combining this environmental information with the radio properties of the bursts themselves, she will probe the emission physics at play and constrain the densities and magnetic fields in their immediate environments, offering a complete picture of the underlying astrophysics driving the population. In parallel, she will help commission the Canadian Hydrogen Observatory and Rapid-transient Detector (CHORD), a next-generation radio telescope that will push into unexplored frontiers of fast radio transients, opening entirely new windows on compact object systems and their environments.

Host Institution: University of California, Los Angeles

Proposal Title: The Universe Seen Through Strong Gravitational Lensing

Massimo Pascale grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, and completed his bachelor’s in astronomy, physics, and math at the University of Arizona. His doctoral work was supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) graduate research fellowship, and will complete his PhD in summer 2025 at University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Professor Liang Dai.

Massimo’s research focuses on the versatile applications of strong gravitational lensing. His dissertation characterized extreme super star clusters seen in high-redshift lensed galaxies, and provided novel evidence for the chemical evolution of their nebulae. By connecting these distant clusters to those observed in the local universe, his work gave new insights into the puzzling origin of globular clusters. In addition to his work on star clusters, Massimo also pioneered new methods for measuring the Hubble constant from strongly lensed supernovae, leading the first such measurement from a Type Ia supernova.

As an Einstein Fellow, Massimo aims to crack the long-standing problem of multiple populations in globular clusters. Leveraging deep James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) imaging and spectra of cosmic noon star clusters, he will confirm the birth of globular clusters in action and establish a clearer understanding of their formation and evolution. Simultaneous to this work, Massimo will reevaluate the existing sample of lensed supernovae to extract a new precision measurement of the Hubble constant, providing a comprehensive framework for this budding approach to measuring the Hubble constant.

Host Institution: MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Proposal Title: Pinpointing the Origins of Fast Radio Bursts and Tracing Baryons in the Cosmic Web

Aaron Pearlman, a native of Baltimore, Maryland, earned both a B.S. in Physics and a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Aaron went on to pursue graduate studies at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) under the mentorship of Professor Thomas Prince, where he was supported by both a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship and a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship. Aaron completed his graduate studies in 2021, earning both a M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from Caltech. Aaron’s doctoral research focused on the development of novel algorithms and analysis techniques for studying compact objects and astrophysical transients. His research, particularly on fast radio bursts (FRBs)–an enigmatic class of extragalactic, short-duration radio transients–has been particularly important in shaping our current understanding of their origins and emission mechanisms.

Aaron is currently a Prize Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University and the Trottier Space Institute at McGill, where he holds a Banting Fellowship, a McGill Space Institute (MSI) Fellowship, and a Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Nature et Technologies (FRQNT) Postdoctoral Fellowship. Aaron is a leader in the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)/FRB Outriggers project–a significant upgrade to the CHIME/FRB experiment that enables CHIME-detected FRBs to be precisely pinpointed on the sky using three new Outrigger telescopes and state-of-the-art very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) techniques–and he is a key member of the CHIME/FRB Collaboration. Aaron works with Professor Victoria Kaspi and the CHIME/FRB team to advance our understanding of the FRB phenomenon by combining observations from the CHIME radio telescope with data from other observatories across the electromagnetic spectrum.

As a Hubble Fellow at MIT, Aaron will utilize the CHIME/FRB Outriggers VLBI array to significantly increase the number of precisely localized FRB sources. He will conduct transformative studies of the host galaxies and local environments of well-localized FRBs, which will shed new light on the astrophysical objects powering these enigmatic transients and the conditions leading to FRB production. Additionally, Aaron will leverage the CHIME/FRB Outriggers sample to help address major open questions in astrophysics and cosmology, such as the distribution of unseen baryonic matter across the Universe and the role of astrophysical feedback processes in shaping cosmic structure. Aaron’s research will pave the way for the next frontier in FRB science, enabling unprecedented studies that will allow FRBs to be used both as powerful cosmological probes and beacons for studying extreme astrophysical systems.

Host Institution: UC Santa Cruz

Proposal Title: Aging in the Cosmos: JWST Insights into the Evolution of Brown Dwarf Atmospheres and Clouds

Caprice Phillips grew up in Hot Springs, Arkansas. She earned her bachelor’s in physics from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Caprice earned her master’s in astronomy from Ohio State University in 2022. Caprice was a predoctoral fellow at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics and is currently an AAUW fellow at Ohio State. She will earn her doctorate in astronomy in June 2025 from Ohio State, where she was advised by Professor Ji Wang, Dr. Jackie Faherty, and Dr. Megan Bedell.

Caprice’s research combines observational and computational methods to understand the atmospheric, physical, and chemical processes in brown dwarfs and directly-imaged planets. Caprice also works on the stellar abundance measurements of solar-type hosts of brown dwarf companions to investigate their formation pathways.

As a Sagan Fellow, Caprice will lead detailed atmospheric retrievals to detail brown dwarfs across an age sequence using James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data. These studies will help increase our understanding of how fundamental cloud properties of substellar objects vary with age (surface gravity) and how clouds affect the understanding of formation pathways. Caprice will outline and disseminate community prescriptions for retrieving young cloudy brown dwarfs, which are critical stepping stones on the way to extract spectral information for Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars with the Habitable Worlds Observatory, a concept for NASA’s next astrophysics flagship mission.

Host Institution: Harvard University

Proposal Title: The Missing Link: Connecting Black Hole Growth and Quasar Light Curves in the Young Universe

Elia Pizzati grew up in Mira, a small town in northeastern Italy along the Riviera del Brenta, a historic waterway connecting Padua to Venice. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s in physics at the University of Pisa, along with a diploma from Scuola Normale Superiore. He is completing his PhD in astronomy at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he is advised by Joe Hennawi and Joop Schaye.

Elia’s research focuses on the formation and evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes, combining numerical and phenomenological methods. His PhD thesis leverages new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations of quasars, galaxies, and their environments to extract insights about their physical properties and cosmic evolution. As an Einstein Fellow, Elia will develop models for the growth of supermassive black holes across cosmic history. By integrating multiple observational probes, including observations of quasar spectra, quasar clustering, and gravitational wave emission, he aims to construct a comprehensive picture of quasar/black hole evolution throughout the universe.

Host Institution: University of Maryland 

Proposal Title: Illuminating the Explosive Origins of the Heavy Elements 

Jillian Rastinejad grew up between Old Saybrook, Connecticut, and Sudbury, Massachusetts. She obtained a bachelor’s in physics and human rights from the University of Connecticut in 2019. In 2025, she will complete her PhD in astronomy at Northwestern University in Illinois, where she is advised by Wen-fai Fong. Jillian’s PhD research has challenged long-standing paradigms of the high-energy signals produced by compact object mergers, and shown that the signatures of heavy element creation are more diverse than previously expected. She has led observing programs on the Hubble Space Telescope, the twin Gemini Observatories, and MMT Observatory, using them to rapidly respond to alerts from the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope that point to the locations of new compact object mergers. 

As an Einstein Fellow, Jillian will use current and upcoming telescopes to expand the small sample of electromagnetic counterparts to compact object mergers, allowing novel tests of theories that map progenitor and remnant properties to those of their relativistic jets and thermal kilonova counterparts. She is an active member of the Searches After Gravitational-waves Using ARizona Observatories (SAGUARO) collaboration, which hunts for the electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational wave events. Jillian’s observations will lay necessary groundwork to ensure future flagships, such as Cosmic Explorer and Extremely Large Telescopes, to succeed in multi-messenger astronomy. 

Host Institution: University of California, Berkeley 

Proposal Title: Fundamental Stellar Parameters Across the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram 

Dominick Rowan is originally from Armonk, New York, and earned a bachelor’s in physics and astronomy from Haverford College in Pennsylvania in 2020. He will complete his PhD in astronomy at Ohio State University in 2025 and was advised by Krzysztof Stanek, Christopher Kochanek, and Todd Thompson. 

Dominick’s research uses large all-sky surveys, such as the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN), and observations from TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), and Gaia, to characterize eclipsing binaries. Detached eclipsing binaries are the most effective method to measure precise and accurate stellar masses and radii. These measurements are critical for making direct comparisons to stellar theory to develop and improve models of stellar structure and evolution. As a Hubble Fellow, Dominick will create a next-generation sample of fundamental mass and measurements, focusing specifically on parts of the parameter space that are underrepresented in current catalogs, such as metal-poor stars. 

Host Institution: Princeton University 

Proposal Title: A seismic atlas of the stellar merger sky 

Nicholas Rui was born and raised in San Diego. He completed his bachelor’s in physics and astrophysics at UC Berkeley, where he studied star clusters. Nicholas will soon complete his PhD in physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he is a National Science Foundation (NSF) graduate research fellow in the Theoretical AstroPhysics Including Relativity and Cosmology (TAPIR) group. 

A theoretical stellar astrophysicist specializing in asteroseismology, Nicholas uses the computer and chalkboard to understand how observations of unusual starquakes can identify stars that have experienced stellar mergers in the distant past and probe the strong magnetic fields buried deep within stellar interiors. 

As a Hubble Fellow at Princeton University, Nicholas will study the statistics of mergers and other interactions between stars through their oscillations, as viewed through the big asteroseismic censuses of current and future missions such as TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) mission. By listening to the sounds of stars, his work will elucidate the violent merger processes that transform the life cycles of individual stars and reshape the stellar population as a whole. 

Host Institution: Institute for Advanced Study 

Proposal Title: Micro Foundations, Macro Realities: Modeling the Multi-scale Physics Shaping Planets, Stars, and Galaxies 

Nadine Soliman was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt. She earned her bachelor’s in physics from NYU Abu Dhabi and is currently completing her PhD in astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), advised by Professor Phil Hopkins. 

Nadine’s research focuses on bridging microscopic and macroscopic astrophysical processes by developing numerical simulations and analytical models to study the formation of planets, stars, and galaxies. She investigates how small-scale microphysical processes such as dust dynamics, thermochemistry, and plasma physics shape large-scale observable phenomena. During her PhD, she explored the role of these processes in star formation, the dynamics and variability of active galactic nuclei (AGN), and the generation of the first magnetic fields in the early universe. 

As a Hubble Fellow, Nadine will extend this work by refining star formation simulations to capture structures and processes across a vast range of scales, from the collapse of giant molecular clouds forming stellar clusters to the formation of individual stars and their planet-forming disks. By tracing how mass, momentum, and magnetic fields are transported across these scales, she aims to uncover the fundamental mechanisms that drive star and planet formation at their most elusive stages. 

Host Institution: California Institute of Technology 

Proposal Title: Ultraviolet Space Telescopes for the new era of Time Domain and Multi-Messenger Astronomy 

Aaron Tohuvavohu grew up in New York City. He received his bachelor’s in theoretical physics from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, where he never touched an experiment or data. Aaron then got a crash course in spacecraft and telescopes, spending three years on NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory operations team at Penn State where he led the development of novel capabilities in optimal scheduling, low-latency autonomous operations, new data products, and advanced analysis techniques. In 2019, Aaron joined the University of Toronto for his PhD, where he designed and built new technology for low-cost, high-performance space telescopes. Aaron is currently an Experimental Physics Prize Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he will continue as an Einstein Fellow. 

Aaron’s research focuses on multi-messenger astrophysics, developing coherent analysis frameworks, and integrating many different experiments on the ground and in space to uncover the physics of black holes, neutron stars, and ultrarelativistic jets using gravitational waves, particles, and light across the electromagnetic spectrum. Critical to completing our multi-sensory view of the universe are capable telescopes in space, particularly in the ultraviolet where hot cosmic explosions shine brightly. As an Einstein Fellow he will develop new space telescopes for the discovery and characterization of these astrophysical laboratories.  

Host Institution: Princeton University 

Proposal Title: Inference at the Edge of the Universe 

Bingjie Wang grew up in Shanghai, China, and received her dual bachelor's in physics and philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh in 2016. She completed her PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 2021 under the mentorship of Professor Timothy Heckman. She is currently an assistant research professor at the Penn State, working with Professor Joel Leja. 

Bingjie's main interest lies in the new parameter spaces that push the limits that existing models of galaxies and active galactic nuclei can address. She specializes in building new models and tools to interpret unexpected observations, thereby connecting the light from the distant universe to the theory of galaxy formation and evolution. Her postdoctoral journey began with the advent of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and she has since been at the forefront of its discoveries about the early universe. She has pioneered Bayesian modeling frameworks to analyze deep fields, and to characterize the extreme red objects representing perhaps the greatest puzzle from JWST. Through these modeling works, she has identified some of the most distant galaxies and uncovered the earliest signatures of ancient starlight. 

As a Hubble Fellow, Bingjie will further advance the boundaries of what can be learned about the cosmos with rigorous methodologies in physical property inference. Her research will focus on the elusive nature of extremely compact red sources and the stochasticity in star formation rate. These efforts will establish a unique approach to forming a new, definitive census of the universe, answering some of the most outstanding questions in galaxy formation. 

Host Institution: MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Proposal Title: Understanding the Origin and Abundance of Free-Floating Planets via Microlensing and Machine Learning 

Keming Zhang grew up in Beijing, China, where he developed a passion for astronomy as an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer. He obtained his bachelor’s in astrophysics from Columbia University in New York in 2018 and PhD in astrophysics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2023. Keming is currently an Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California San Diego. 

Keming’s research lies at the intersection of gravitational microlensing, extrasolar planets, and machine learning. He is particularly interested in the connection between circumbinary planets (CBPs) and free-floating planets (FFPs), as ejection from circumbinary systems is thought to be a major pathway for producing FFPs. As a Sagan Fellow, Keming will first validate current microlensing FFP candidates with high angular resolution imaging. At the same time, Keming will advance the theory and phenomenology of high-order microlensing, as well as develop physics-informed machine learning models. These efforts will provide effective computational tools to fully exploit the vast data from the forthcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s microlensing survey for studies of exoplanet demographics, including CBPs and beyond.