May 15, 2023

The U.S. National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences has awarded 59 researchers with postdoctoral fellowships to explore a broad range of research topics, from how planets are formed to the mathematics of data analysis and artificial intelligence. 46 of the fellowships are provided through NSF's Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships program and 13 through NSF's Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships program. Both programs seek to bolster the future U.S. scientific workforce by supporting recent doctoral recipients as they embark on their scientific career.

In addition to supporting fundamental research activities for three years, the fellowships provide funding for community outreach activities such as educational programs with local high school students. Each fellow also receives mentorship from a sponsoring senior researcher. Two of the astronomy and astrophysics fellowships, noted below, include funding provided to NSF by Charles Simonyi.

"Tomorrow's breakthrough discoveries and innovations are grounded in fellowships like these, which help cultivate the vast scientific talent that exists all over America," says Stefaan De Winter, program director of the Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships program.

"NSF's postdoc fellowships — and the training and mentorship that comes with them — can be a game changer for early-career researchers by helping them develop the skills necessary to conduct fundamental scientific research," says Andrea Prestwich, program director of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships program.

For more information visit NSF's Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships program and Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships program.

2023 Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Research Fellows:

Devontae Baxter (University of California San Diego)
Constraining the Cosmic Evolution of Environmental Quenching & Predicting Protocluster Populations

Kaley Brauer (Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian)
Little Galaxies, Big Impact: New Insights through Highly-Resolved Simulations of Early Dwarf Galaxies

Colin Burke (Yale University)
Precise measurement of intermediate-mass black hole demographics with the Rubin Observatory*

Ruby Byrne (California Institute of Technology)
Probing the Cosmic Dawn with the OVRO-LWA

Sanjana Curtis (University of California, Berkley)
End-to-End Modeling of the Kilonova Zoo

Matthew De Furio (The University of Texas at Austin)
From Dense Clusters to OB Associations: Tracing the Impact of Dynamics on Multiplicity beyond 10 AU in the Orion Complex

Josh Forer (Columbia University)
Improved Astrochemical Data for Diffuse Cloud Models: Theoretical Dissociative Recombination Rate Coefficients for OH+, H2O+, and H2Cl+

Steven Giacalone (California Institute of Technology)
Investigating the Origins of Hot Jupiters orbiting A-type stars

Ronald Lopez (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Development of an MKID High Resolution Multi-Object Spectrometer

Madeline Lucey (University of Pennsylvania)
Our Galaxy's Formation: Decoding the Clues Concealed in its Center

Daniel Rybarczyk (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
All Shook Up: Understanding the Chemistry, Dynamics, and Kinematics of the Diffuse Interstellar Medium

Darryl Seligman (Cornell University)
Interstellar Comets and the New Insights to Planet Formation They Provide*

Nora Shipp (Carnegie Mellon University)
Near-field Cosmology with 6D Stellar Streams

* includes funding provided to NSF by Charles Simonyi

2023 Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellows:

Tara Abrishami (University of Hamburg)
Graph decompositions in structural graph theory

Ryan Alweiss (University of Cambridge)
Capacity Problems, Partition Regularity, and Polynomial Density Hales-Jewett

Sarah Blackwell (University of Virginia)
Combinatorial and Group Theoretic Approaches to Surfaces in 4-Manifolds

Alexi Block Gorman (The Ohio State University) 
Interactions between model theory and automata

Sarah Brauner (University of Quebec)
Symmetries of rings from combinatorics and configuration spaces

Thomas Brazelton (Harvard University)
Equivariant enumerative geometry

Benjamin Call (University of Illinois Chicago)
Thermodynamic Formalism Beyond Uniform Hyperbolicity

Sky Cao (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Gauge theories and random surfaces

William Cooperman (New York University)
Quantitative rates of fluid mixing and homogenization of Hamilton-Jacobi equations

Hunter Dinkins (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Enumerative geometry and 3d mirror symmetry

Bradley Dirks (Stony Brook University)
Further Study of Singularities using mixed Hodge modules and V-filtrations

George Domat (Rice University)
Big Mapping Class Groups of Surfaces and Graphs

Allen Fang (Princeton University)
Wave Decay in General Relativity

Sara Fridovich-Keil (Stanford University)
Algorithms and Applications

David Hamann (Stanford University)
Categorical Local Langlands

Felipe Hernandez (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Diffusive limits for linear and nonlinear systems

Abigail Hickok (Columbia University)
Problems in Topological and Geometric Data Analysis

Hannah Hoganson (University of Maryland)
Metrics on Teichmuller Space and Coarse Geometry in Geometric Group Theory

Joseph Jackson (University of Chicago)
Topics in mean field game theory

Eric Jovinelly (University of Illinois Chicago)
Rational Curves in Birational Geometry: Geometric Manin’s Conjecture and the Mori Dream Space Conjecture

Alex Kapiamba (Brown University)
Near-parabolic MLC

Daniel Kessler (University of Washington)
Selective Inference for Networks

Ilyas Khan (Duke University)
Singularity theory for G_2 Laplacian Flow

Hannah Knight (University of California, Los Angeles)
Essential p-Dimension of the Finite Simple Groups

Jeffrey Kuan (University of Maryland)
Stochastic kinetic equations in the physical sciences

Jared-Duker Lichtman (Stanford University)
Analytic and Combinatorial Number Theory

Siyan Li-Huerta (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Applications of Arithmetic Moduli Spaces

Max Lipton (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
An interdisciplinary study in charged knots, Plateau problems with Mobius energy on the boundary, and helicoidal limits

Sammy Luo (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Extremal Combinatorics

Emily McMillon (Virginia Polytechnic Institute)
Coding Theory

Scott Mutchnik (University of Illinois Chicago)
Classification and neostability theory

David Palmer (Harvard University)
Active Topological Defects in Morphogenesis: Beyond Nematics

Gregory Parker (Stanford University)
Fueter Sections in Mathematical Gauge Theory

Tristan Phillips (Dartmouth College)
Counting Abelian Varieties of Bounded Height

Lily Reeves (California Institute of Technology)
Chemical distance in near-critical percolation and ballistic annihilation

Colleen Robichaux (University of California, Los Angeles)
Algebraic Combinatorics

George Seelinger (University of Michigan)
Catalan functions and their generalizations

Daniel Spiegel (University of California, Davis)
A C*-Algebraic Approach to Phase Invariants of Parametrized Quantum Systems

Eric Thoma (Stanford University)
The Coulomb Gas, Membrane Model, and Statistical Physics

Sameera Vemulapalli (Stanford University)
Parametrizations and Asymptotics of Low Degree Number Fields

Joshua Wang (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Floer theory, categorification, and applications to low-dimensional topology

Luya Wang (Stanford University)
Embedded contact homology, algebraic structures and applications

Karl Winsor (Stony Brook University)
Foliations and group actions on moduli spaces

Jane Wu (University of California, Berkeley)
Neural Representations for Deformable Manifolds

Giorgio Young (University of Michigan)
Spectral theory of Schrodinger operators and Jacobi matrices, integrable PDE

Robin Zhang (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Special values of L-functions and Stark units with representation theory and arithmetic geometry

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The U.S. National Science Foundation propels the nation forward by advancing fundamental research in all fields of science and engineering. NSF supports research and people by providing facilities, instruments and funding to support their ingenuity and sustain the U.S. as a global leader in research and innovation. With a fiscal year 2023 budget of $9.5 billion, NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives more than 40,000 competitive proposals and makes about 11,000 new awards. Those awards include support for cooperative research with industry, Arctic and Antarctic research and operations, and U.S. participation in international scientific efforts.

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