2026 NHFP Fellows

Host Institution: Princeton University

Proposal Title: Charting the Growth of the First Supermassive Black Holes through “Little Red Dots”

Hollis Akins grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina. An early interest in photography pointed him towards the stars and eventually to study astronomy under the dark skies of rural Iowa, where he earned his bachelor of arts in physics from Grinnell College in 2018. He is currently completing his PhD in astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, advised by Caitlin Casey and Steven Finkelstein.

Hollis’ research examines the formation and growth of the most massive galaxies and supermassive black holes in the universe’s first billion years. Taking a primarily observational approach, he leverages large facilities including ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to study dust-obscured star formation, the abundance of galaxies at cosmic dawn, and early black hole growth. He focuses particularly on "little red dots"— a new class of compact, extremely red broad-line active galactic nuclei (AGN) discovered by JWST that challenges existing models of early supermassive black hole formation. Hollis is an active member of several large observational programs, including COSMOS-Web, CEERS, and VENUS.

As an Einstein Fellow at Princeton University, Hollis will use little red dots as a window into the formation of the first supermassive black holes. Drawing on EMBER — a JWST Cycle 4 program delivering the largest statistical spectroscopic sample of little red dots to date — he will establish the physical nature of these enigmatic objects. With this foundation in hand, he will extend the AGN census to the faintest luminosities and highest redshifts, ultimately synthesizing these results into a comprehensive empirical model for how the first black holes formed and grew.

Host Institution: Stanford University

Proposal Title: Building a Multi-Probe Approach to Primordial Physics

Dhayaa Anbajagane was born an hour east of Pittsburgh, but spent his entire childhood in Madras, an effervescent city on the southeastern coast of India. After barely passing his high-school board exams, he headed to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, for his undergraduate degree in physics, working with Gus Evrard and Dragan Huterer. He will complete his PhD in summer 2026 at the University of Chicago, where he worked with Chihway Chang on optical and millimeter-wave data from the DELVE (DECam Local Volume Exploration), DES (Dark Energy Survey), and SPT (South Pole Telescope) collaborations.

Dhayaa’s research focuses on building theoretical models and data analysis pipelines that can translate measurements of cosmic structure — such as galaxy clusters, cosmic filaments, dwarf galaxies, etc. — into constraints on the nature of physics operating in the first moments after the big bang. As an Einstein Fellow at Stanford University, Dhayaa will continue strengthening the links between building theoretical models of the early universe and translating those into practical analyses of cosmic surveys. He will build a new multi-wavelength approach for analyzing the next generation of surveys (such as those conducted with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, Simons Observatory, and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope) and use it to shed more light on the nature of our primordial universe.

Host Institution: Institute for Advanced Study

Proposal Title: The Glue Between the Stars: Unraveling Turbulence and Magnetism across All Scales

James Beattie grew up on the rural northeast coast of Australia. He pursued a degree in biology and computing at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, and after earning his degree realized that he was also deeply drawn to the creation of knowledge. He returned to university to complete a double degree in a math (applied and computational) and a BSc (physics). Through summer research programs at the Australian National University in nuclear fusion and astrophysics, he developed a strong interest in astrophysics as a field that combines mathematics, computation, and physics to address fundamental questions about the universe.

He subsequently moved to the Australian National University to undertake his PhD, working on magnetization, turbulence, and cosmic-ray transport in the interstellar medium. He was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and graduated from his PhD in 2024. He then held a joint postdoctoral position at Princeton University and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) at the University of Toronto.

As a Hubble Fellow, James’ research will span physical scales from galactic turbulence to compact object mergers, seeking universal laws that govern how energy and magnetic fields evolve in turbulent astrophysical plasmas. He will develop the next generation of GPU-enabled simulations of supernova-driven turbulence, investigating how instabilities in supernova remnants can spontaneously generate magnetic fields and potentially magnetize the early universe through the first stellar explosions. He will also pursue the first non-ideal relativistic magnetohydrodynamics simulations of plasma in merging binary neutron stars, building predictive models for the saturation of some of the strongest magnetic fields in the Universe.

Host Institution: University of Kansas

Proposal Title: From Magnetic Fields to Measurable Signals: 3D MHD Modeling of Sub-Jovian Exoplanets

Hayley Beltz was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee and spent most of her childhood in southwest Michigan. She earned her bachelor’s degree in physics and math from Kalamazoo College in 2018. She then attended the University of Michigan for graduate school, working with Emily Rauscher, and earning her PhD in astrophysics in 2023.  She took a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Maryland for just over 2 years. Since 2026, Hayley has been a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Kansas.  

In Hayley’s research, she uses multidimensional atmospheric models to study the atmospheres of hot gas giant exoplanets. Magnetic effects shape most solar system atmospheres, but astronomers have yet to concretely detect magnetic fields on exoplanets. Hayley’s previous work has explored the role of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) in shaping atmospheric circulation of the hottest and brightest gas giant exoplanets as well as how these effects manifest observationally. As a Sagan fellow, her research will explore magnetic effects in sub-Jovian atmospheres. This work will produce the first 3D MHD motivated observational predictions of these objects to help interpret JWST and ground-based, high-resolution observations.

Host Institution: Harvard University

Proposal Title: From Ice Giants to Exorings: New Frontiers in Exoplanet Characterization with JWST & Roman CGI Direct Imaging

Rachel Bowens-Rubin moved from Minnesota to Massachusetts to pursue their undergraduate degree at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in physics & Earth, atmospheric, and planetary science. After completing an additional Master of Science in planetary science at MIT, they worked as a mechanical engineer with the Harvard Cosmic Microwave Background group to support the deployment of the BICEP3 telescope at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. In 2018, they returned to Antarctica to serve as the winterover lab technician at McMurdo Station.

Rachel completed their PhD at University of California, Santa Cruz in 2024 as a member of the Lab for Adaptive Optics, specializing in both instrumentation development and observational astronomy. For their dissertation, they validated an emerging adaptive optics technology for large-format deformable mirrors and conducted direct imaging studies with the W. M. Keck Observatory of exoplanet candidates identified using radial velocity and astrometry. Beyond research, Rachel is passionate about sharing science through theater and has written eight short plays and one full-length script in the science/science fiction genre.

Rachel is currently a principal investigator at Eureka Scientific where they lead two James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) programs (GO 6122: Cool Kids on the Block and SURVEY 8581: HOTH). Their goal as a Sagan fellow is to develop new methods in direct imaging that can be used to characterize the worlds that resemble those in our solar system. Their current JWST programs focus on observing a set of nearby neighboring star systems to detect cold giant exoplanets that are at the threshold between ice and gas giant exoplanets (similar to Neptune and Saturn) that could become prime candidates for future deep spectroscopic characterization. Rachel will also be advancing methods to study the rings and moons that are likely to accompany these worlds.

Host Institution: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Proposal Title: Dark Matter at the Threshold of Galaxy Formation

Vedant Chandra grew up in New Delhi, India, and completed his undergraduate degree in physics at Johns Hopkins University, where he helped establish a research program on white dwarf stars with Nadia Zakamska. He is currently finishing his PhD in astronomy and astrophysics at Harvard University, advised by Charlie Conroy. He is also a regular visitor at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, working with Hans-Walter Rix.

Vedant seeks to understand the evolution of the Milky Way and the physical nature of dark matter using techniques spanning observational astronomy, simulations, and instrumentation. During his PhD, he led wide-field spectroscopic surveys to dynamically map the Milky Way on its largest scales and reconstruct its assembly history. As the deputy project scientist of the Via Project, Vedant is developing a new multiplexed spectroscopic instrument and survey to measure the influence of dark matter substructure on the velocities of faint halo stars.

As a Hubble Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Vedant will establish stellar streams and dwarf satellite galaxies as robust astrophysical detectors of small-scale dark matter substructure. He will conduct a comprehensive survey of these systems and measure the abundance of dark sub-halos in our galaxy. Vedant will also explore new instrumentation projects at MIT, using low-noise detectors to enable high-speed, high-resolution spectroscopy.

Host Institution: University of Chicago

Proposal Title: Mass Fractionation in the Escaping Atmospheres of Small Planets, and the Hunt for Helium and Oxygen Worlds

Hailing from Rochester, NY, Collin Cherubim earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University in 2015 where he developed synthetic nucleic acids for gene regulation. After a brief music career, he taught high school science for five years in Boston, MA and Casablanca, Morocco. Inspired by Carl Sagan and the like, Collin pivoted from the microscopic to the macroscopic in search of the cosmic perspective.

Collin is now completing his PhD as a Harvard Prize Graduate Fellow at Harvard University. As a hybrid theorist-observer working with Robin Wordsworth and David Charbonneau, Collin has pushed our understanding of the chemical evolution of small planets. He developed a planetary evolution model that predicted novel classes of exoplanets, unlike anything in our solar system, and validated the predictions with the first discovery of an atmosphere on an Earth-like exoplanet.

As a Sagan Fellow, Collin will develop a state-of-the-art numerical model that simulates mass fractionation in escaping atmospheres and the evolution of planetary magma oceans. His predictions will help interpret the outpour of atmospheric spectra and provide a roadmap to discovering molecular oxygen in exoplanet atmospheres. He will also lead a survey in search of two new classes of planets predicted by his models: helium and oxygen worlds.

Host Institution: University of Notre Dame

Proposal Title: New Frontiers in Galactic Archaeology

Originally from Russia, Roman Gerasimov discovered his fascination with astronomy under the Mediterranean-blue skies of Cyprus, where he spent his formative years. He earned a bachelor’s degree in astrophysics from University College London and a PhD in physics from University of California, San Diego. He is currently a Society of Science Fellow at University of Notre Dame.

Roman is a galactic archaeologist. Like traditional archaeologists who use ancient artifacts to reconstruct human history, he uses ancient stars to uncover how the elements of the periodic table were forged and how the Milky Way acquired its present-day structure and chemical makeup.

As a Hubble Fellow, Roman will continue his work under the Golden Dome at Notre Dame, pushing galactic archaeology into two new frontiers. First, he will lead the first truly large-scale chemical survey of stars beyond our galaxy using the ʻŌnohiʻula/PFS instrument on the Subaru telescope. Roman is particularly excited to bring Milky Way archaeology techniques to nearby dwarf galaxies, whose simpler histories can expose the chemical imprint of individual enrichment events. Second, he will use the Hubble, James Webb, and Euclid space telescopes to extend galactic surveys to the lowest-mass stars and brown dwarfs. Due to their unique properties, these extremely faint objects may shine the brightest light on hidden chapters of our galaxy’s history, including the origin of anomalous abundance patterns in globular clusters that violate the core expectations of chemical evolution.

Host Institution: Columbia University

Proposal Title: Massive stars, Inside and Out: Bridging 1D & 3D models of Stars and Supernovae

Jared Goldberg grew up in the San Fernando Valley of star-studded southern California. For his bachelor’s degree, he attended Claremont McKenna College, graduating with a physics and philosophy double-major. He then attained his PhD in physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2022, along with a Certificate in College and University Teaching. Concurrently, he taught astronomy labs at Santa Barbara City College, where he finally learned how to look at stars outside of a computer. Upon moving to Manhattan as a Flatiron Research Fellow at the Center of Computational Astrophysics (CCA), he quickly forgot what the night sky looks like. There, he also taught Computational Methods with the CUNY Astrophysics MS Program. Jared is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate within the TARDIS group at Michigan State University, primarily working remotely from the CCA. Non-professionally, Jared loves hiking and nature, martial arts, music, playing guitar, good food, woodworking, puzzles, and puns.

Jared describes his research as stellar engineering, astrophysical demolitions, and space forensics — building and destroying stars on a computer to connect stellar structure to observable emission in stars’ dynamic lives and explosive deaths. As a Hubble Fellow, Jared’s goal is to produce an open-source repository of massive star models, bridging between the core structure as informed by 1D (spherically symmetric) stellar evolution calculations out to the stellar envelope, informed by systematic 3D radiation-hydrodynamics simulations. This work will deepen understanding of convection, pulsations, eruptions, and explosions as a function of stars’ fundamental properties, and provide a launching point for further numerical experiments to study stellar fates.

Host Institution: California Institute of Technology

Proposal Title: Probing Compact Object Demographics with a New Generation of Space-Based Observatories

Hannah Gulick grew up in Okoboji, Iowa, and earned dual degrees in physics and astronomy, along with a BA in creative writing, from the University of Iowa. As an undergraduate, she worked with Phil Kaaret and contributed to hardware development and data analysis for HaloSat, the first NASA-funded CubeSat dedicated to astrophysics.

She is expected to receive her PhD in astrophysics from the University of California, Berkeley, in May 2026. Under the mentorship of Jessica Lu and John Tomsick, she led the design, testing, and assembly of two new space-based survey instruments built to uncover hidden populations of stellar remnants. These include the CuRIOS-ED optical CubeSat and BTO (Background and Transient Observer), a gamma-ray instrument selected to fly on NASA’s COSI (Compton Spectrometer and Imager) mission. Across both efforts, she guided instrument development from concept through final integration while leading and mentoring large undergraduate teams.

As an Einstein Fellow at the California Institute of Technology, Hannah will use data from the missions she built to connect optical microlensing surveys with high-energy gamma-ray observations, tracing compact objects from their explosive births to their long-lived, isolated remnants. She will expand this multi-wavelength approach through her upcoming work on the Ultraviolet Explorer (UVEX) mission, helping shape its compact object transient science program and advance next-generation space-based surveys.

Host Institution: University of Arizona, Steward Observatory

Proposal Title: Securing the Doppler Legacy in the Hunt for Earth-like Exoplanets

Arvind Gupta grew up in Annandale, Virginia. He earned his bachelor's degree in astronomy and physics from the University of Virginia in 2018, after which he began graduate studies at Penn State University under the guidance of Jason Wright and Suvrath Mahadevan. Upon the completion of his doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics with a dual title in Astrobiology in 2023, he joined NOIRLab in Tucson, Arizona, where he is currently an inaugural NOIRLab Postdoctoral Fellow.

Arvind's research focuses on the detection and characterization of exoplanets using high-resolution stabilized spectrographs. He is particularly interested in the design and optimization of radial velocity exoplanet surveys, and he leads a long-term search for weak exoplanet signals via intensive radial velocity monitoring of nearby, Sun-like stars with the NEID spectrograph. He has also worked on the subject of giant planet migration through observational studies of warm Jupiters on eccentric orbits.

As a Sagan Fellow, Arvind will develop new data-driven techniques for disentangling stellar, instrumental, and planet-induced radial velocity signals using spectra secured through coordinated observations with multiple stabilized spectrographs. His work will aim to enable stellar variability mitigation at the extreme precision limit, bringing us closer to the detection and mass measurement of Earth twins. Arvind will also explore new methods for quantifying how radial velocity data can inform and improve the efficacy of direct imaging observations in anticipation of future ground- and space-based observatories.

Host Institution: California Institute of Technology

Proposal Title: Decoding the Formation of Extreme Giant Planets

Henrik Knierim grew up in Lübeck, a historic city in northern Germany. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from Heidelberg University under the guidance of Bertram Bitsch at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and Konstantin Batygin at California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In January 2026, he finished his PhD in theoretical astrophysics at the University of Zurich under the supervision of Ravit Helled.

Henrik's research focuses on the theory of planetary interiors, planetary evolution, and planet formation. In particular, he has investigated Ohmic dissipation in hot Jupiters, mixing processes in giant planets, and how to link the atmospheric composition of exoplanets to their formation histories.

As a Sagan Fellow at Caltech, Henrik will develop novel analytical models and numerical tools to explain the formation of extreme giants. Specifically, he will investigate the origin of the mass-metallicity relation of giant planets, seek to identify the physical mechanisms that give rise to exceptionally low-density "super-puffs," and test whether the most compact giants form predominantly through unconventional evolutionary pathways. With cutting-edge facilities like the James Webb Space Telescope now discovering and characterizing these exotic worlds on an unprecedented scale, his work will integrate formation, interior evolution, and atmospheric observations to illuminate how giant planets work and how planetary diversity emerges across the galaxy.

Host Institution: University of Texas at Austin

Proposal Title: The Cosmic Frontier: Uncovering Faint Galaxies that Ignited the Early Universe

Vasily Kokorev was born in Ukraine and grew up beyond the Arctic Circle in Murmansk, Russia. He earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees in astrophysics from the University of Sussex in 2018 and received his PhD from the Cosmic Dawn Center at the University of Copenhagen in 2022, where he was supervised by Georgios Magdis and Gabriel Brammer. During his doctoral program, he studied the interstellar medium of galaxies before pivoting to the distant universe using the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Vasily is currently a Cosmic Frontier Prize Fellow at the University of Texas, Austin.

Vasily’s research focuses on the earliest galaxies and black holes in the universe and the onset of cosmic structure. By combining deep JWST observations with the magnification of gravitational lensing in massive galaxy clusters, he searches for the faintest galaxies at the edge of cosmic time. As a NASA Hubble Fellow, he will use JWST and gravitational lensing to uncover the first generation of galaxies and reveal how they formed, evolved, and shaped the universe during the first few hundred million years after the big bang.

Host Institution: Stony Brook University

Proposal Title: Unveiling the Mystery of Massive Black Hole Seeds through Gravitational and Electromagnetic Waves

Konstantinos Kritos grew up in Katerini, Greece, near Mount Olympus. He completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the National Technical University of Athens in 2021 and received an Excellence award from the Greek State Scholarship Foundation for his undergraduate performance. He is expected to receive his PhD in physics from Johns Hopkins University in 2026, where he was advised by Emanuele Berti and Joseph Silk. His graduate research was supported in part by a scholarship from the Onassis Foundation.

Konstantinos studies gravitational wave astronomy and the astrophysics of compact objects in dense stellar environments. He developed RAPSTER, a rapid population-synthesis code for modeling stellar-mass binary black hole mergers and star cluster evolution, now used by several research groups. RAPSTER has become an important tool for understanding the dynamical origin of a subset of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA gravitational wave events. His broader research explores the formation of intermediate-mass black holes, the physical conditions of their astrophysical environments inferred from observations, Thorne–Żytkow objects, primordial black holes, little red dots, tidal disruption events, and extreme-mass-ratio inspirals.

As a Hubble Fellow at Stony Brook University, Konstantinos will perform millions of rapid simulations to investigate how the first stellar clusters at high redshift formed massive black hole seeds, helping to bridge the long-standing gap between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes. His work will generate multi-messenger signals across gravitational and electromagnetic wavelengths and make testable predictions for current and future observatories, including the James Webb Space Telesope, LSST (Legacy Survey of Space and Time), UVEX (Ultraviolet Explorer), and LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna).

Host Institution: Carnegie Observatories

Proposal Title: A Portrait of Galactic Black Hole Demographics

Casey Lam earned her bachelor's degree in math and physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2017, and her PhD in astrophysics from University of California, Berkeley in 2023, supervised by Jessica Lu. Since 2023, she has been a Carnegie/Harrison Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Observatories.

Casey’s research is focused on finding and characterizing isolated and detached binary black holes in the Galaxy. Although these “quiet” systems are expected to make up the vast majority of the black hole population, only a handful have been detected to date; most known black holes are in intrinsically rare configurations such as X-ray binaries or merging binaries that produce “loud” electromagnetic or gravitational radiation.

As an Einstein Fellow, Casey will leverage time-domain astrometry from the Gaia mission and the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to grow the sample of quiet black holes. She will characterize the sample’s selection function then use population synthesis models to interpret the observations in order to shed light on massive stellar evolution and black hole formation.

Host Institution: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Proposal Title: New Tools for Dark Matter Physics

Ben Lehmann grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and completed all of his education in the region, going from a local high school to Stanford University. He moved to the University of California, Santa Cruz for his PhD, working with the theory group under the supervision of Stefano Profumo.

Ben's PhD came at a unique moment for dark matter physics: new results from colliders and laboratory experiments had just set stringent constraints on the most highly anticipated dark matter candidates, and the field was left without a clear direction. At the same time, a wealth of other observables became newly accessible, ranging from new measurements enabled by quantum sensors to the first detection of gravitational waves. Ben's research program thus developed around a simple goal: to leverage these new tools to study the properties of dark matter quickly and broadly, paving the way for the future of dark matter science.

After completing his PhD in 2022, Ben came to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a Pappalardo Fellow. His research program has continued to produce exciting results that enable significant new tests of dark matter physics. Ben's work has substantially advanced laboratory detection of dark matter, and has laid the groundwork for experiments sensitive to an extremely broad class of dark matter particles. He has developed new astrophysical and cosmological probes of dark matter interactions, and has made strides towards testing the possibility that dark matter exists in the form of black holes or other compact objects.

Ben's research is structured to reach interesting conclusions even with null experimental results. His program thus promises to lead to a set of important insights for dark matter physics in the coming years.

Host Institution: Johns Hopkins University

Proposal Title: Listening Beyond the Ring: A New Paradigm for Black Hole Spectroscopy

Sizheng Ma grew up in Xi’an, China. He received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Tsinghua University in 2017 and completed his PhD in physics at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2023. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Sizheng’s research focuses on gravitational waves and strong-field gravity. By integrating numerical relativity, analytical techniques, and data analysis, he seeks to use gravitational wave observations to deepen our understanding of the strong-gravity regime of the universe, as well as the fundamental physics of black holes and neutron stars.

As an Einstein Fellow, he will develop novel approaches to extract black hole physics from gravitational waves emitted during compact binary coalescences, uncovering how nonlinear effects in General Relativity are encoded in observed waveforms. His work will also advance our understanding of the inspiral–merger–ringdown structure of gravitational wave events. Together, these efforts will help establish a new framework for interpreting gravitational wave data and for precision tests of General Relativity.

Host Institution: Harvard University

Proposal Title: The Dynamic Astronomical Sky as a Probe of Supermassive Black Holes

Megan Masterson grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 2019, she received bachelor’s degrees in physics and astronomy from Case Western Reserve University. She then spent one year as a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge, where she completed a master’s degree in Astrophysics under the supervision of Chris Reynolds. In May 2026, Megan will complete her PhD in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she works with Erin Kara to understand the extreme environments around accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs).

Megan’s research sits at the intersection of black hole accretion and time-domain astrophysics. She uses multi-wavelength observations to both discover overlooked populations of SMBH transients and understand the most extreme accreting SMBHs. During her PhD, she uncovered a missing population of tidal disruption events that show up as purely infrared transients due to dust obscuration, and she revealed a puzzling X-ray oscillation in an active galaxy that defied our conventional wisdom for scale-invariant black hole accretion.

As an Einstein Fellow at Harvard University, Megan is excited to use the ground-breaking advances in time-domain astrophysics, namely the Vera Rubin Observatory and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, to probe SMBH demographics. Her work aims to answer key questions related to the seeding and growth of supermassive black holes using multi-wavelength transient discovery across cosmic time.

Host Institution: City University of New York

Proposal Title: Probing High-mass Binary Black Hole Formation and Fundamental Physics with the Remnants of Our Cosmos’ Most Extreme Collisions

Simona Miller is a gravitational-wave astrophysicist and passionate educator hailing from Boston, Massachusetts. They graduated from Smith College in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in physics and a minor in mathematics. After a year at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover, Germany as a Fulbright Research Scholar, Simona began a PhD in physics at the California Institute of Technology working with Professor Katerina Chatziioannou, which they will complete in June 2026.

Simona studies how, when, and why various properties of merging black holes can be inferred from gravitational-wave signals. Their dissertation focuses on black hole spin, a crucial yet notoriously-difficult-to-constrain probe of astrophysical processes ranging from internal stellar dynamics to the large-scale evolutionary history of our universe. Simona has developed a suite of methods to achieve accurate, precise, and unbiased spin measurements at every stage of LIGO’s (Laser Interferometer, Gravitational-Wave Observatory) data-analysis pipeline, enabling the most robust black hole spin measurements to date.

As an Einstein Fellow at the City University of New York, Simona will use current and next-generation gravitational-wave detectors to study binary black holes with masses around 100 times that of our Sun. These systems are potentially the missing link between stellar and supermassive black holes, and offer a window into dense, chaotic environments like globular clusters and the disks of active galactic nuclei—yet they present unique observational challenges. Simona will pilot the use of post-merger signals to tackle open data analysis problems, quantify downstream astrophysical implications of our modeling assumptions, and test fundamental physics.

Host Institution: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Proposal Title: The Widespread Impact of Megaparsec-scale Jets on the Cosmic Web

Martijn Oei grew up in Oegstgeest, a town near the coast of South Holland, the Netherlands. He earned bachelor’s degrees in astronomy and physics and a master’s in cosmology from Leiden University. Martijn then read for a master’s in mathematics at the University of Cambridge, before returning to Leiden for a PhD in radio astronomy. During his doctoral studies, advised by Reinout van Weeren and Huub Röttgering, Martijn analyzed hitherto unknown arcminute-scale, low–surface brightness radio emission in LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) data. This led to the identification of ten thousand megaparsec-scale jet pairs, generated by supermassive black holes — an order of magnitude expansion of the known population. Martijn investigated some of the largest of these black hole feedback systems to the cosmic web in more detail and revised up estimates of their number density and magnetization potential. Martijn is currently a Prize Postdoctoral Fellow in Observational Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology. He co-leads observing programs on the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope, the Very Large Array, the Green Bank Telescope, Keck II, and the William Herschel Telescope.

As an Einstein Fellow, Martijn will continue to observe, model, and interpret the origin and cosmological impact of black hole megajets. This work contributes to understanding the full impact of black holes on the cosmic web’s baryon, cosmic ray, galaxy, and magnetic field populations. The inclusion of megajets in the newest generation of cosmological simulations is an exciting development. Martijn will also investigate whether megajets and their bow shocks operate as ‘torchlights’ that stir and light up the otherwise elusive intergalactic medium.

Host Institution: Carnegie Mellon University

Proposal Title: Stay Close to Go Far: Resolved Stellar Populations in Nearby Galaxies as Critical Benchmarks for Binary Evolution Models

Anna O’Grady is from Kilbride, Newfoundland and Labrador. She received a joint BSc in physics and applied mathematics from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, with an undergraduate thesis on black hole horizon mathematics supervised by Ivan Booth and Hari Kunduri. She moved into the realm of observational stellar astronomy for her PhD at the University of Toronto, completing her dissertation on rare classes of stars in nearby galaxies with Maria Drout and Bryan Gaensler. She is currently a McWilliams Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University.

Anna’s research focuses on resolved populations of massive binary stars. She couples her observations to simulations and models in order to place constraints on uncertain parameters in binary evolution, especially mass transfer processes.

As a Hubble Fellow at Carnegie Mellon, Anna will investigate the population of yellow supergiant (YSG) binaries in nearby galaxies, constraining population-level statistics, comparing the observed YSG binary population to simulated models, and identifying rare products of binary interaction such as stripped-envelope YSGs and helium giants. This program will provide key observable calibrations for binary population synthesis codes, and impact predictions for stellar feedback, chemical evolution, and multi-messenger astrophysics.

Host Institution: Stanford University

Proposal Title: Mapping Dark Matter and Baryons across the Universe with the Cosmic Microwave Background

Frank J. Qu grew up in Madrid, Spain, after having been born under the wide starry skies of Hailar, a small town on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia. He completed his undergraduate degree in physics at Imperial College London in 2018, before receiving his MASt and PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2023, where he worked with Professor Blake Sherwin. He is currently a KIPAC Fellow at Stanford University.

Frank's research uses the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to map the distribution of dark matter and baryonic matter across the universe. He serves as co-lead of the Simons Observatory CMB lensing working group and plays an active role across ACT (Atacama Cosmology Telescope), DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument), and the LSST (Legacy Survey of Space and Time) Dark Energy Science Collaboration, driving multi-probe analyses that combine CMB and galaxy survey data. His work on CMB gravitational lensing with ACT has produced some of the most precise measurements of cosmic structure growth to date, providing conclusive evidence that the universe's large-scale structure is growing as expected, helping resolve a key tension between early- and late-universe measurements, and he is now leading the most precise kSZ (kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich) analysis to date using ACT and DESI data.

As an Einstein Fellow, Frank will advance CMB lensing into a sub-percent precision tool with the Simons Observatory and pioneer kSZ measurements to directly map the distribution of baryons in galaxy halos, breaking a key systematic bottleneck limiting next-generation galaxy surveys. Together, these efforts will deliver transformative constraints on neutrino masses and dark energy, and test whether the growth of cosmic structure reveals new physics beyond the standard model.

Host Institution: National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Proposal Title: Zooming in on Prebiotic Chemistry at the Earliest Stage of Low-mass Star and Planet Formation

Samantha Scibelli was born and raised in upstate New York, where her interest in astronomy and the chemical composition of the universe began early. For a high school research project at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, she analyzed and classified stellar spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). She went on to pursue a bachelor’s degree in physics and astronomy at Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York and expanded her portfolio to include research on dark matter and stellar evolution.

During her graduate studies, Samantha pivoted toward observational radio astronomy and astrochemistry. She earned her PhD in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. Her thesis focused on constraining the physical and chemical structure of low-mass starless and prestellar cores – the primordial birthplaces of stars like our Sun and planets like those in our solar system. Passionate about science writing, she also completed a Science Communications Certificate while at the University of Arizona.

Currently a Jansky Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville, VA, Samantha has demonstrated that precursor prebiotic molecules are ubiquitous in starless and prestellar cores across various local star-forming environments. As an incoming Sagan Fellow at NRAO, Samantha will continue to advance our understanding of our chemical origins through several observing campaigns with the 100 m Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). These new observations will ”zoom-in” at high spectral and spatial resolution to trace the precise locations of these precursor prebiotic species in and around prestellar cores. These studies will help bridge the gap between interstellar chemistry and emergence of life on Earth.

Host Institution: Johns Hopkins University

Proposal Title: A Multi-Wavelength View of Quenching Across Cosmic Time

David Setton was born in Vancouver, BC, but spent most of his childhood in the suburbs of Phoenix, AZ. He earned his bachelor's degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Arizona. He then completed his PhD in physics at the University of Pittsburgh under the supervision of Dr. Rachel Bezanson. In his thesis, he studied the structures, star formation histories, and number densities of post-starburst galaxies, a population that links star forming galaxies to their quiescent descendants via a process often referred to as “quenching.” David is currently a Brinson Prize Fellow at Princeton University, where his work characterizes the formation histories of massive galaxies across cosmic time and attempts to understand the strange properties of newly discovered high-redshift "little red dots."

David's research emphasizes a panchromatic approach to studying galaxies and supermassive black holes, leveraging a wide range of the world's most powerful observing facilities to fully constrain the energy output of stars, gas, dust, and active galactic nuclei. As a Hubble Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, he will apply these techniques to post-starburst galaxies across all epochs, studying the first massive galaxies at "cosmic dawn," spatially resolving galaxies in the midst of rapid quenching at "cosmic twilight," and connecting these populations at "cosmic noon" with new generations of massively multiplexed spectroscopic surveys. These studies will enable a greater understanding of how the dense cores of the most massive elliptical galaxies formed, and how the physical processes that regulate star formation and quenching evolve over cosmic time.