Steward's Erika Hamden wins Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers

We are proud to announce that Assistant Professor Erika Hamden has won a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE),  an award established in 1996. We now quote from the White House announcement "...PECASE acknowledges the contributions scientists and engineers have made to the advancement of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and to community service as demonstrated by scientific leadership, public education, and community outreach.  The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy coordinates the PECASE with participating departments and agencies."

Professor Hamdem, who started at Dept of Astronomy/ Steward Observatory in August 2018, received this award in part for her groundbreaking work on high efficiency UV detectors, which she helped develop over the last 10 years as part of a team at JPL. She also led the Faint Intergalactic medium Redshifted Emission Balloon (FIREBall-2) Telescope team, which successful flew in September 2018 and observed light from hydrogen in the outskirts of distant galaxies.

Professor Hamden was a TED2019 Fellow. You can see her TED talk, which has received much notice, HERE. WIRED Magazine wrote about Erika, building experiments, and the notion of failure moving research forward. You can see her science pages HERE. 

Erika joins Simon White, Ramesh Narayan, Jill Bechtold, Chris Walker, Lucy Ziurys, and Olivier Guyon as former and current Steward Faculty who have won this award or its predecessors,  for instance, "Presidential Young Investigator."