New Delhi: Northwestern University astrophysics faculty Allison Strom has been selected as a 2024 Packard Fellow in Science and Engineering by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, an accolade that identifies her among the most creative emerging researchers in the United States. This fellowship comes with an annual grant of $175,000 for five years, which will liberate Strom and her team to conduct innovative research on astrophysics.
Strom, an assistant professor in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, intends to study how the effect of massive stars that are formed in early galaxies affects the evolution in the early universe. “The Packard Fellowship will let me and my group take risks in areas we would not have considered before in addition to allowing us to integrate people with different backgrounds from astronomy and astrophysics,” Strom said. Her work is to study the dynamics of galaxies and their formation thereby trying to find answers to some of the most basic questions about the evolution of the universe.
The CECILIA Survey and the James Webb Space Telescope
Strom heads the trailblazing CECILIA (Chemical Evolution Constrained using Ionised Lines in Interstellar Aurorae) Survey which is named for astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. This survey uses JWST to study the abundance of elements in distant galaxies by observing what kind of light they produce. Strom says that CECILIA is like the key for deciphering the chemical messages of galaxies and gets to the very heart of the universe’s formation processes. “CECILIA is going to be the code through which astronomers would be able to decode the thousands of other spectra of distant galaxies that JWST will capture over its lifetime,” said Strom.
Science and Engineering Achievements of Packard Fellows
Since 1988, Packard Fellowship programme has provided funding to over 700 scientists and engineers who are expected to be future Nobel Laureates and Fields Medal winners. The fellowship gives researchers a lot of autonomy to decide where the money has to be spent, it covers basic expenses from lab equipment to childcare. It enables the creation of high impact interdisciplinary work from clean energy to medical research.
The Packard Foundation’s present effort is in sync with the vision of David Packard to promote the research capabilities of universities in science and engineering. Through a support of early career scientists the programme enhances a university’s research capacity and empowers future research breakthroughs. The foundation has provided grants of around $500 million to early career scientists from 55 universities that produce innovative science.
Strom’s fellowship and her major project on the CECILIA Survey strengthen astrophysics in Northwestern and signal more exciting research findings that will extend the University’s knowledge of galaxies and the processes that govern them through the universe’s evolution.
