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Katherine Whitaker, professor of astronomy in the College of Natural Science, will receive the 2027 Lancelot M. Berkeley-New York Community Trust Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy as a member The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) UNCOVER collaboration, recognizing the UNCOVER team’s groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of the early universe.

Whitaker, working with UMass postdoctoral researcher in astronomy John Weaver, now a Brinson Prize Fellow at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, oversaw the collaboration’s imaging work alongside former UMass astronomy doctoral student Sam Cutler ’25.

Awarded annually by the American Astronomical Society (AAS), the Berkeley Prize honors significant astronomical research and includes a monetary award and an invitation to deliver the closing plenary lecture at the AAS winter meeting, which will take place Jan. 10-14, 2027, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

“The imaging working group that laid the foundation for so many of UNCOVER’s discoveries was based right here at UMass, so this recognition means a great deal to our department,” Whitaker says. “Team awards like this are rare in astronomy, and it’s incredibly exciting to share this honor with such a talented group of collaborators. They’re truly some of my favorite people to work with.”

UNCOVER—short for “Ultradeep NIRSpec and NIRCam Observations before the Epoch of Reionization”—is a Cycle 1 JWST Treasury program that used the immense gravitational power of Abell 2744, a giant galaxy cluster also known as Pandora’s Cluster, to study some of the universe’s earliest galaxies. The cluster’s mass bends and magnifies light from distant background galaxies, allowing researchers to observe objects that would otherwise be too faint to detect.

Through deep imaging and spectroscopy, the CNS team and its international collaborators have investigated the formation of the first galaxies, the re-ionization of the early universe, dust-obscured star formation, and the processes that cause galaxies to stop forming stars.

The prize recognizes three recent articles published in “The Astrophysical Journal,” including studies that detail the UNCOVER program and its imaging and spectroscopic findings, as well as research into faint, compact objects known as “little red dots.” The team found evidence that many of these early universe sources are reddened, actively accreting supermassive black holes rather than solely dusty, star-forming galaxies, suggesting that active galactic nuclei were more common at high redshifts than previously understood.

“UNCOVER was just the beginning,” Whitaker says. “New data from a JWST program I'm leading will give us an entirely new window on the distant universe. These observations complement the original survey and open up discovery space we simply haven’t had access to before. They’re scheduled for late October, so it won't be long before our team sets off on a new adventure together.”

More information about the Berkeley Prize can be found at AAS.org.