Feb. 25, 2009

J.D. Harrington
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-5241
j.d.harrington{at}nasa.gov

RELEASE: 09-040

NASA ANNOUNCES 2009 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS FELLOWS

WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected fellows in three areas of astronomy
and astrophysics for its Einstein, Hubble, and Sagan Fellowships. The
recipients of this year's post-doctoral fellowships will conduct
independent research at institutions around the country.

"The new fellows are among the best and brightest young astronomers
in
the world," said Jon Morse, director of the Astrophysics Division in
NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "They already have
contributed significantly to studies of how the universe works, the
origin of our cosmos and whether we are alone in the cosmos. The
fellowships will serve as a springboard for scientific leadership in
the years to come, and as an inspiration for the next generation of
students and early career researchers."

Each fellowship provides support to the awardees for three years. The
fellows may pursue their research at any host university or research
center of their choosing in the United States. The new fellows will
begin their programs in the fall of 2009.

"I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to spending the next
few years conducting research in the U.S., thanks to the
fellowships," said Karin Oberg, a graduate student in Leiden, The
Netherlands. Oberg will study the evolution of water and ices during
star formation when she starts her fellowship at the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass.

A diverse group of 32 young scientists will work on a wide variety of
projects, such as understanding supernova hydrodynamics, radio
transients, neutron stars, galaxy clusters and the intercluster
medium, supermassive black holes, their mergers and the associated
gravitational waves, dark energy, dark matter and the reionization
process. Other research topics include searching for transits among
hot Neptunes and super-Earths, microlensing planets through modeling
algorithms, conducting high-contrast imaging surveys to detect
planetary-mass companions, interferometrically imaging of the inner
regions of protoplanetary disks, and modeling of super-Earth
planetary atmospheres.

The 10 fellows in the Einstein program conduct research broadly
related to the mission of NASA's Physics of the Cosmos Program. Its
science goals include understanding the origin and destiny of the
universe, the nature of gravity, phenomena near black holes, and
extreme states of matter. The Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge,
Mass., administers the Einstein Fellowships for NASA.

The 17 awardees of the Hubble Fellowship pursue research associated
with NASA's Cosmic Origins Program. The missions in this program
examine the origins of galaxies, stars, and planetary systems, and
the evolution of these structures with cosmic time. The Space
Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., administers the Hubble
Fellowships for NASA.

The Sagan Fellowship, created in September 2008, supports five
scientists whose research is aligned with NASA's Exoplanet
Exploration Program. The primary goal of this program is to discover
and characterize planetary systems and Earth-like planets around
other stars. The NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, which is operated
at the California Institute of Technology in coordination with NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., administers the Sagan
Fellowship Program.

A full list of the 2009 fellows and other information about these
programs is available at:

http://cxc.harvard.edu/fellows

http://nexsci.caltech.edu/sagan/fellowship.shtml

For more information about NASA's Astrophysics Division, visit:

http://nasascience.nasa.gov/astrophysics

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