Graduate Awards & Scholarships
Judith S. Young Memorial Fellowship
Judith S. Young was a pioneer in radio astronomy and professor at UMass Amherst. This award for exceptional women applicants to our department serves to honor her legacy as a scientist and pillar of the community. Among her many accomplishments are pioneering observations of extragalactic molecular gas and construction of the UMass Sunwheel observatory. In the inaugural year, the recipient of the Young Fellowship will receive the following:
- Travel funds to attend a scientific conference
- Stipend for purchase of laptop or other research-related expenses
- Exemption from TA duties in the first semester
Award Winners
- 2024 Victoria Salazar
- 2021 Sarah Bodansky
- 2019 Roxana Popescu
- 2018 Tazkera Haque
The Five College Astronomy Graduate Research Fellowship
This fellowship is established through a gift from the Irvine Family to the Five College Astronomy Department in memory of Mary Dailey Irvine to encourage and reward excellence in an initial research project undertaken by a student in the Graduate Program prior to admission to Ph.D. candidacy. The fellowship award will consist of support for travel to a scientific meeting to present the results of the research project. It is expected that the final work would be published and would acknowledge the Mary Dailey Irvine Fund.
Award Winners:
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2006 Shikui Tang, "Simulations Galactic Bulge Winds"
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2005 Yu Lu, "The Origin of Cold Dark Matter Halo Density Profiles"
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2004 Zhiyuan Li, "Gone with the galactic wind: observation and theory "
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2003 William Fischer, "Near-IR Echelle Spectroscopy of T Tauri Stars: He I 10830 and Paschen Gamma as Wind and Accretion Diagnostics"
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2002 Dusan Keres, "CO Luminosity Functions For FIR and B-band Selected Galaxies"
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2002 Li Ji, "Four Point X-ray Sourses in NGC4631"
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2001 Juan-Hwan Choi, "The Growth of Galaxies in Cosmological Simulation"
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2000 Nicolas Bouche
Massachusetts Space Grant Consortium
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a member of the Massachusetts Space Grant Consortium, funded through NASA. Astronomy students who are US citizens have regularly received fellowships for summer research through this program. See the Consortium's website for more information.
Spaulding-Smith Fellows
The Spaulding-Smith Fellowship is awarded to outstanding doctoral students from historically underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Named for two UMass Amherst alumni — Major Franklin Spaulding (the first African American to receive a doctorate) and Elizabeth Hight Smith (the first woman to receive a graduate degree) — this fellowship provides financial support during the first and final year of graduate school. Incoming students seeking admission to UMass Amherst doctoral programs can be nominated by their Graduate Program Director or Admission Chair. More information: https://www.umass.edu/graduate/inclusion/spaulding-smith-fellows
University-Level Honors & Awards
Distinguished Teaching Award (DTA)
Honoring individual excellence, the campus-wide Distinguished Teaching Award is highly competitive and prestigious. Only current students and alumni may nominate faculty for this award. Each year faculty, graduate, and undergraduate student committees review more than 100 nominations in a two-step process of data collection and analysis prior to selecting three faculty and two teaching assistant awardees. Recipients receive a monetary prize and are recognized at both the undergraduate and graduate commencements. In April and September, TEFD sends an email to all students soliciting nominations of instructors for recognition of their teaching abilities and interest in student learning.