2025 A&A Awards recognise outstanding early-career researchers
- Details
- Published on 18 March 2025
On March 5th 2025, the A&A Board finalised their selection for this year’s A&A Awards, recognising the exceptional work of early-career researchers in the field.
A&A Award for Outstanding PhD Article
Dr. Sara Mascia, Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), AUSTRIA
Sara Mascia's PhD focuses on uncovering the sources and mechanisms responsible for the reionization of the Universe, which is one of the major questions of contemporary cosmology. She identified indirect indicators of the escape fraction (fesc) of ionizing UV radiation in early galaxies, finding that z = 3 galaxies with C IV emission tend to have high photon production efficiency and potentially high fesc, identifies C IV emission as a tracer of cosmic reionizer analogs and a link between low and high-z phenomena. Using JWST/NIRISS data from the GLASS-JWST program, she reinforced the idea of small, young star-forming galaxies as the main contributors to reionization. In the A&A award paper on CEERS, she studied low-mass galaxies at 6 ≤ z ≤ 9. calculated fescvalues and their total ionizing budget, and found that this population contributes around a third of the reionizing photon budget; still fainter galaxies beyond the CEERS magnitude limit are likely responsible for most the rest of the reionization budget. Her work was crucial in the estimations of fesc, and represents a significant step forward in solving a problem of very broad interest.
Read her award winning paper here.
A&A Award for Outstanding Early Career Researcher Article
Dr. Marion Villenave, IPAG, Grenoble, FRANCE
The paper submitted by Marion Villenave for the Early Career award investigates the vertical settling and the radial drift of large (O(1mm)) dust grains in protoplanetary disks, which are important factors in their eventual incorporation into planetary cores. It uses 0.1" resolution ALMA observations of the 0.9 and 2 mm continuum emission of (close to) edge-on disks to directly constrain the vertical extent of the mm-sized dust. Several of the few best resolved disks have vertical extents of a few au at a 100 au radius, a factor of several more compact than the scale height of their gas, and one additionally is more vertically compact at 2 mm than at 0.9 mm. This provides the first direct demonstration of the theoretical prediction that mm-size grains settle relative to the gas, and in the latter case of size-selective settling. This is a significant step in a very active field of astronomy.
Read her award winning paper here.
We extend our sincere congratulations to the recipients of the 2025 A&A Awards. Their research highlights the vital contributions of emerging scholars to the advancement of astronomical knowledge. The A&A Awards continue to celebrate innovation and excellence, reinforcing the crucial role of early-career scientists in shaping the future of the field.