The Heising-Simons Foundation is pleased to announce this year’s 51 Pegasi b Fellowship recipients. Award recipients are selected based on their outstanding research achievements, innovative research plans, and promising impact on the field of planetary astronomy.

The Foundation extends it warmest congratulations to this year’s recipients:

• Brianna Lacy, University of Texas, Austin
  Research interests: Constructing a theoretical framework to steer interpretations of observational data toward promising answers.
• Ellen Price, University of Chicago
  Research interests: Optimizing computational methods to address questions in planet formation through elegant solutions and simple simulations.
• Emily Martin, University of California, Santa Cruz
  Research interests: Empowering better observations of the solar system and beyond by designing and building novel instruments.
• Luke Bouma, California Institute of Technology
  Research interests: Hunting for rare, young planetary systems to measure their properties and determine their origins.
• Melodie Kao, University of California, Santa Cruz
  Research interests: Developing new strategies to assess the engines that generate the magnetic processes and environments of planet-like objects, and to interpret exoplanet radio detections.
• Rachael Roettenbacher, Yale University
  Research interests: Expanding the limits of observation techniques to distinguish stellar activity from exoplanet signals.
• Samantha Trumbo, Cornell University
  Research interests: Examining the surfaces of Jupiter’s icy moons to gain insight on the geochemical nature, evolution, and diversity of ocean-world environments.
• Yifan Zhou, University of Texas, Austin
  Research interests: Watching exoplanets grow and evolve over multiple time periods to transform our understanding of their formation mechanisms and atmospheres.

The Foundation launched the 51 Pegasi b Fellowship Program in 2016 to recognize early-career investigators with extraordinary potential, creativity, and brilliance. The fellowship award provides the recipients with the opportunity to conduct independent research and to develop new theories, tools, and techniques to push the field forward. Each recipient will receive a three-year grant up to $375,000 to pursue their proposed research at their selected host institution.