Issue of April 24, 2026
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Sethanne Howard, Ferah Munshi, Stella Kafka, and Ben Keller
[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]
This week's issues:
1. Career Interview Series: Meredith Rawls, Researcher with Vera C. Rubin Observatory
2. Crosspost: 14 Things Our PhD Supervisors Got Right and Why It Mattered
3. Results of 2026 AAS Election
4. Hannah Wallace Named 2026 DPS-NSBP Speaker
5. The Early-Career Prizes — Not All the Same!
6. Nominate Someone (Perhaps Yourself!) for the Weber Award
7. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Honored With English Heritage Blue Plaque
8. NASA Early Career Investigator Program in Earth Science Opportunity
9. Bangladesh Astronomical Society and IAU Celebrate Women and Girls in Astronomy Month
10. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
12. Access to Past Issues
An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.
Meredith Rawls grew up under the dark skies of Eastern Washington, where she loved to stargaze as a child. She thought her state could do more to protect the night from light pollution, though, and wanted to do something about it. As a Girl Scout, she focused her project for the Girl Scout Gold Award on diminishing light pollution at her local summer camp. Through fundraising, she was able to purchase shields to install on the street lights closest to the camp, allowing campers to have a better view of the night sky.
Rawls carried her love of the night sky with her when she attended Harvey Mudd College. She enjoyed many STEM subjects, but she knew she had to narrow down to one major. At the time, Harvey Mudd offered six choices: math, computer science, physics, biology, chemistry, and engineering.
Read more at
https://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2026/04/career-inteview-series-meredith-rawls.html
By Linda Nordling
When someone talks about doing a PhD, the stories that surface are usually about what went wrong: the overbearing adviser, the chaotic laboratory experiments, the loneliness and the stress. But the experience is rarely only that. Amid challenges such as funding uncertainty, competition for positions, pressure to publish and disruptions caused by global conflicts and crises, many supervisors quietly do things that change a student’s trajectory for the better.
Read more at
https://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2026/04/crosspost-14-things-our-phd-supervisors.html
The 2026 AAS Election began on 5 March 2026 and wrapped up on 20 April with votes submitted by 31% of the 5,871 members who were eligible to vote. Many thanks to everyone who participated!
The electees include former Committee for the Status of Women in Astronomy member Angela Speck as an At-Large Trustee.
Read more at
https://aas.org/posts/news/2026/04/results-2026-aas-election
By Susanna Kohler
Within the partnership between the Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP), Earth and Planetary Systems Sciences (EPSS) section, Hannah Wallace has been selected as the newest DPS-NSBP Speaker Awardee. Hannah is a senior studying astronomy–physics and physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She works with Dr. Hannah Zanowski, an assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, on topics in planetary atmospheres and oceanography with the objective to investigate modern-Earth-like aquaplanets (exoplanets with ~100% ocean coverage).
Read more at
https://aas.org/posts/news/2026/04/hannah-wallace-named-2026-dps-nsbp-speaker
By Alice Monet
The AAS prizes include three that are designed to honor astronomers in the early phases of their careers: the Annie Jump Cannon Award, the Helen B. Warner Prize, and the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize. These are distinct prizes with different selection criteria and rules. All are awarded annually.
The Cannon Award, given annually, is presented for outstanding research and the promise for future research by a postdoctoral woman researcher. To be eligible, a nominee must be a female astronomer and a resident of North America, or a member of a North American institution stationed abroad, as of the date the award is announced.
The Warner Prize recognizes an early-career individual for a significant contribution made to observational or theoretical astronomy during the five years preceding the award. To be eligible, an awardee will not have reached 36 years of age in the year designated for the award or will be within eight years of receipt of their PhD.
The Pierce Prize recognizes outstanding achievement of an early-career individual over the past five years in observational astronomical research based on measurements of radiation from an astronomical object.
Read more, including how to nominate an early-career astronomer you know or yourself, at
https://aas.org/posts/news/2026/04/early-career-prizes-not-all-same
By Richard Fienberg
The Joseph Weber Award for Astronomical Instrumentation is awarded to an individual for the design, invention, or significant improvement of instrumentation (not software) leading to advances in astronomy. The award is given annually, and there are no restrictions on a candidate’s citizenship or country of residence. As is true for most AAS prizes, self-nominations are allowed.
Can you think of someone (or are you someone) who has conceived, designed, built, and/or upgraded instrumentation that’s been critical to the success of your work, whether alone or as an indispensable member of a collaboration? If you do, consider nominating that person for the Weber Award!
Read more, including nomination instructions, at
https://aas.org/posts/news/2026/04/nominate-someone-perhaps-yourself-weber-award
The astronomer who discovered what stars are made of, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, has been commemorated with an English Heritage blue plaque at her teenage home, 70 Lansdowne Road in Notting Hill. It was while living at this address that Payne-Gaposchkin won a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge. She later earned a doctorate in astronomy from Harvard and in 1927, she became the youngest astronomer ever to have a star of distinction next to her name in the publication American Men of Science.
Read more at
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c75k04zplwwo
By NASA
The Early Career Investigator Program in Earth Science (ECIP-ES; ROSES A.11) is designed to support outstanding scientific research and career development of scientists and engineers at the early stage of their professional careers. As part of the Early Career Research (ECR) Program, this element welcomes innovative research initiatives and seeks to cultivate scientific leadership in Earth System Science to advance the development and implementation of the Earth Science to Action strategy.
ROSES-2025 Amendment 53 releases A.11 ECIP as a new opportunity in ROSES-25. Mandatory Notices of Intent are due by May 18, 2026, and proposals are due June 17, 2026. NASA will host two virtual informational sessions on at 12 PM eastern time on May 14, 2026, and at 1 PM eastern time on May 26, 2026.
Read more at
I would like to report that Bangladesh, a member of the IAU Outreach program of OAO facilitated by me through an opportunity given by the IAU several years ago, and the Bangladesh Astronomical Society (BAS) jointly celebrated Women and Girls in Astronomy month 2026.
The National Outreach Coordinator of Bangladesh (NOC-BD) of IAU-OAO, operated through BAS, is engaged in astronomical workshops and events nationally with undergraduate students in various universities and supervised by the main IAU coordinator, Prof. Farseem Mohammedy of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), and invite speakers from the IAU members list for their events generally held on a hybrid platform. For Women and Girls in Astronomy (WGA) month, NOC-BD and BAS organized a series of lectures by professors of Bangladesh universities and concluded it by a special session with my lecture.
Bangladeshi students are ever enthusiastic about astronomy. I provided many undergraduate astronomy books from the US to various Bangladeshi universities. They are being used for the undergraduate courses at several universities.
See Prof. Nahar's lecture at
https://youtu.be/sPyZU6a_h-A?si=A94KoEosoG9bxU-o
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