We are very proud of all our students, current and former. This page contains lists of former students who have earned degree, graduate or undergraduate, from our department and the University of Arizona. We list those who earned advanced degrees (graduate alumni) and undergraduate BS degrees. We believe our lists are complete back to 1929 (when Philip Keenan, the inventor of the M-K stellar classification system, got his degree), but there's still a chance that one or two of you were missed when we developed the list. So if you think we missed you, please send us an email and we'll be glad to add you. Send us your news, as well!
Dr. Gabriele Bozzola
Dr. Gabriele Bozzola (left) completed his PhD in computational astrophysics at Steward Observatory, and recently received the prestigious American Physical Society’s 2024 Nicholas Metropolis Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Work in Computational Physics. In particular, we was recognized for developing numerous open-source computational tools, and for spearheading simulations of binary black holes with U(1) charge (read more here).
Dr. Evan E. Schneider
Dr. Evan E. Schnieder (right) received the 2019 APS Nicholas Metropolis Award for her “exemplary achievement in computational physics, through leveraging new architectures to develop methods for astrophysical simulation on the world's fastest supercomputers" (read more here). We are proud of the superlative work our PhD students produce during their time at Steward Observatory.
David J. Setton
We are similarly pleased to watch our undergraduate majors go on to achieve extraordinary work in astronomy and other fields. In a 2023 paper authored by former UArizona Astronomy Major David Setton (pictured left) and Steward Observatory Associate Professor Gurtina Besla, a 100,000-light-year bow shock on the edge of the Milky Way may change our understanding of how the circumgalactic medium evolves. "David started this project as a senior Astronomy Major at UArizona under my supervision,” Besla says. “I am so proud of him for having now defended his dissertation at U. Pitt and continuing his career as a Brinson Prize Fellow at Princeton." Besla says the predicted bow shock has important implications for the evolution of the Magellanic system and nearby satellites, and even for indirect dark matter detection experiments. Learn more at Sky and Telescope.
Dr. Caitlin Casey
Former undergrad Caitlin Casey (degrees in Astronomy, Physics, and Math in 2007) won the 2018 AAS Pierce Prize "for her work on high-redshift star-forming galaxies and for pioneering new quantitative techniques for determining the importance of submillimeter galaxies in galaxy evolution." Caitlin became a 2019 Cottrell Scholar.
Pictured below is the Spring 2013 group of undergraduates/alumni who worked on (and published papers on) exoplanet light curves.
Back row: Amanda Walker-LaFollette, Allison McGraw, Brandon Raphael, Michael Berube, Blythe Guvenen, Ian Cates, Kyle Pearson Front row: Brianna Smart, Kendall Cook, Lauren Biddle, Jake Turner