The Gruber Foundation (TGF) Fellowships 2024 have been awarded to Aldana Grichener, Jonathan Alexander Quirola Vásquez, and Honghui Liu. Applications for TGF Fellowship 2025 are now open.

Each year, The Gruber Foundation (TGF), in collaboration with the International Astronomical Union (IAU), funds a US$75 000 fellowship programme for promising young astronomers. As in recent years, the Selection Committee decided to award this year’s fellowship jointly to three outstanding candidates, each receiving US$25 000.

Aldana Griechener is an Israeli astronomer who will receive her PhD from the Israel Institute of Technology in 2024. In autumn 2024, she will move to the University of Arizona in Tucson as a Steward Observatory Prize Fellow in Theoretical and Computational Astrophysics. She will investigate the electroweak and gravitational signatures of the events that lead to the formation of the heaviest elements in the Universe and assess the contribution of massive stars and binary systems to the r-process enrichment over cosmic time. She plans to use the grant to pay for priority supercomputer access, conference attendance, and publication costs.

Jonathan Alexander Quirola Vásquez is an astronomer from Ecuador who received his PhD in 2023 from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, where he is now a postdoctoral fellow. He also holds a research position at the Escuela Politécnica Nacional-Astronomical Observatory of Quito, Ecuador. In 2024, he will start a three-year postdoctoral position at the Department of Astrophysics, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His research will focus on unravelling a new type of transient population: the Fast X-ray Transients (FXT) detected by Chandra, XMM-Newton, and Swift-XRT. To determine the nature and the progenitors of the FXTs, and their cosmic rates, he will identify their host galaxies and follow their contemporaneous counterparts using multi-wavelength facilities. He plans to use the grant to pay for conference travel, conference attendance, research and observing visits, and publication costs.

Honghui Liu is a Chinese astronomer who will receive his PhD from Fudan University, China, in June 2024. On 1 September 2024, he will start a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Eberhard-Karls University of Tübingen, Germany. His research will focus on the study of accreting compact objects with X-ray observations. Starting with the development of a fully self-consistent reflection model of X-ray binaries (XRBs), he will then use the constraints given by polarimetric and spectroscopic measurements to derive the best coronal geometry. He plans to apply his model to archival data from simultaneous IXPE, NuSTAR/Insight-HXMT observations of XRBs. This approach will pave the way for future observations by X-ray polarimetric missions. He plans to use the grant to attend conferences, invite and visit collaborators, and purchase computer equipment.

The 2024 TGF committee, consisting of IAU Vice-Presidents Hyesung Kang, Ilya Usoskin, and IAU President-Elect Willy Benz (Chair), would like to reiterate the exceptional quality of all the candidates who applied for TGF 2024. “Today’s young generation of astronomers is simply amazing with such stimulating new ideas. With so many deserving applicants, you really wish you could support many more! We congratulate the winners and all other applicants on their remarkable achievements. We wish them every success in their future professional endeavours,” said Willy Benz.

In 2024 the call for TGF Fellowship applications received 38 valid submissions (16 female, 22 male) from 17 countries.

The 2025 call is now open, and the complete applications for the TGF Fellowship should be submitted online by the deadline of 1 March 2025. Information about how to apply is available online.

More Information

The IAU is the international astronomical organisation that brings together more than 12 000 active professional astronomers from more than 100 countries worldwide. Its mission is to promote and safeguard astronomy in all its aspects, including research, communication, education and development, through international cooperation. The IAU also serves as the internationally recognised authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies and the surface features on them. Founded in 1919, the IAU is the world's largest professional body for astronomers.

Links

• The IAU–Gruber Foundation Fellowship Programme
• TGF Fellowship Application Procedure
• TGF Fellowship Application submission form

Contacts

Willy Benz
IAU President-Elect / Chair of the The Gruber Foundation Fellowships Committee 
Email: willy.benz@unibe.ch 

Lina Canas
IAU Membership Coordinator
Email: lina.canas@iau.org / iaupressoffice@iau.org 

Guido Schwarz
IAU Press Officer
Email: iaupressoffice@iau.org