You are here
HEAD History Items
2016 • 2017 • 2018 • 2019 • 2020 • 2021 • 2022 • 2023
- We're happy to announce the winners of the 2023 HEAD Prizes. The Innovation Prize was awarded to Gordon Garmire and Mark Bautz for the development and support of the Chandra ACIS instrument; the Early Career Prize was awarded to Chiara Mingarelli for her leadership in the analysis of pulsar timing array data; the Mid-Career Prize was awarded to Philip Fajardo Hopkins for developing numerical methods and tools to advance our theoretical understanding of important topics in high-energy astrophysics; the (first) Distinguished Career Prize was awarded to Meg Urry for her remarkable contributions to our understanding of a wide variety of topics in extragalactic high energy astrophysics; and the Bruno Rossi Prize was awarded to Anatoly Spitkovsky or his pioneering numerical simulations of astrophysical shocks and particle acceleration. Congratulations to all the winners! Please see the HEAD Press Release for more information.
- HEAD Election Results: We're happy to report that Raffaella Margutti and Javier Garcia were elected as members of the Executive Committee, replacing Ryan Hickox and Eileen Meyer, who finished their tenure at the end of the 2023 Business Meeting.
- HEAD members Bob Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell were awarded the first IAU Astronomy Outreach Prize, for “their more than 25 years of curating the daily Astronomy Picture of the Day, which is now available in more than 20 languages, seen by millions each day, and used in classrooms throughout the world.”
- The HEAD Executive Committee is happy to announce that the 2022 Rossi Prize has been awarded to Keith Gendreau, Zaven Arzoumanian and the NICER Team for development of the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) and the revolutionary insights it is providing about the extreme environments of neutron stars and black holes, including the first precise and reliable measurement of a pulsar’s mass and radius from detailed modeling of its pulsed waveform.
- The HEAD Executive Committee is happy to announce that the 2022 Dissertation Prize has been awarded to Kishalay De for his work on cosmic fireworks in the lives of compact binaries, conducted at the California Institute of Technology under the supervision of Prof. Mansi M. Kasliwal.
- The HEAD Executive Committee is happy to announce the following prize winners for 2022: the HEAD Early-Career prize was awarded to Prof. Laura Lopez; the HEAD Mid-Career prize was awarded to Dr. Brad Cenko; and the HEAD Innovation Prize was awarded to Dr. Keith Arnaud. The Executive Committee is also happy to announce that Dr. Dr. Ariadna Murguia Berthier, Dr. Kishalay De, and Dr. Jakob van den Eijnden have been named as finalists for the 2022 HEAD Dissertation Prize. Please see the press release for more details.
- The results of the HEAD election were announced Jan 21, 2022. Kristin Madsen was elected HEAD Vice Chair (replacing Randall Smith), Elizabeth Ferrara was elected HEAD Treasure (replacing Frits Paerels) and the new Executive Committee Members are Tea Temim and Tamara Bogdanovic (replacing Erin Kara and Alexander van der Horst). Mike Corcoran will continue as HEAD Secretary.
- NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission launched at 1 a.m. EST Thursday, December 9 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Congratulations IXPE team!
- NASA announced the selection of the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI), led by John Tomsick (UC Berkeley), as the next small explorer mission. COSI will survey the entire gamma-ray sky every day at energies between 0.2 and 5 MeV, with launch expected in 2025.
- Dr. Allessandra Corsi, Dr. Gregg Hallinan, Dr. Mansi Manoj Kasliwal and Dr. Raffaella Margutti have been awarded the 2022 New Horizons in Physics Prize "For leadership in laying foundations for electromagnetic observations of sources of gravitational waves, and leadership in extracting rich information from the first observed collision of two neutron stars.
- Dr. Victoria Kaspi and Dr. Chryssa Kouveliotou have won the 2021 Shaw Prize in Astronomy, "for their contributions to our understanding of magnetars, a class of highly magnetized neutron stars that are linked to a wide range of spectacular, transient astrophysical phenomena.ties".
- The 18th Divisional Meeting has been Cancelled. The 18th Divisional meeting of the High Energy Astrophysics Division was scheduled to be held at the JW Marriott Tucson Starr Pass Resort & Spa. However, due to the corona virus pandemic, this meeting was cancelled. The HEAD Executive Committee considered holding the 18th meeting as a meeting-in-a-meeting at the 238th AAS meeting in June 2021 in Anchorage. However, since the decision was made that the 238th meeting will be held online (because of the CoVID pandemic), the HEAD Executive Committee has decided not to participate in the virtual meeting. Thus we made the decision to cancel the 18th Divisional meeting. The next HEAD meeting is the 19th Divisional Meeting to be held (we hope) as an in-person meeting in Pittsburgh, in March 2022.
- The HEAD Executive Committee is pleased to announce the following HEAD Award winners: The 2021 Bruno Rossi Prize has been awarded to Francis Halzen and the IceCube Collaboration "for the discovery of a high-energy neutrino flux of astrophysical origin". The 2021 Mid-Career Prize has been awarded to Anna Watts, "for her trailblazing work in the understanding of neutron star fluid dynamics, and developing and applying rigorous inference to obtain observational constraints on dense matter". The 2021 HEAD Dissertation Prize was awarded to Renee Ludlam for her dissertation entitled "A Hard Look at Accretion Around Neutron Stars". Her work showed how accretion disk reflection can be used to place limits on neutron star radii (and therefore the equation of state). The inaugural HEAD Innovation Prize was awarded to Dr. Richard Kelley "for his unflagging effort to make the transformational capabilities of the X-ray microcalorimeter available to the high energy astrophysics community". Congratulations to all the award winners. Please see the HEAD press release for more information.
- HEAD members Bob Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell were awarded the first IAU Astronomy Outreach Prize, for “their more than 25 years of curating the daily Astronomy Picture of the Day, which is now available in more than 20 languages, seen by millions each day, and used in classrooms throughout the world.”
- The HEAD Executive Committee is happy to announce that the 2022 Rossi Prize has been awarded to Keith Gendreau, Zaven Arzoumanian and the NICER Team for development of the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) and the revolutionary insights it is providing about the extreme environments of neutron stars and black holes, including the first precise and reliable measurement of a pulsar’s mass and radius from detailed modeling of its pulsed waveform.
- The HEAD Executive Committee is happy to announce that the 2022 Dissertation Prize has been awarded to Kishalay De for his work on cosmic fireworks in the lives of compact binaries, conducted at the California Institute of Technology under the supervision of Prof. Mansi M. Kasliwal.
- The HEAD Executive Committee is happy to announce the following prize winners for 2022: the HEAD Early-Career prize was awarded to Prof. Laura Lopez; the HEAD Mid-Career prize was awarded to Dr. Brad Cenko; and the HEAD Innovation Prize was awarded to Dr. Keith Arnaud. The Executive Committee is also happy to announce that Dr. Dr. Ariadna Murguia Berthier, Dr. Kishalay De, and Dr. Jakob van den Eijnden have been named as finalists for the 2022 HEAD Dissertation Prize. Please see the press release for more details.
- The results of the HEAD election were announced Jan 21, 2022. Kristin Madsen was elected HEAD Vice Chair (replacing Randall Smith), Elizabeth Ferrara was elected HEAD Treasure (replacing Frits Paerels) and the new Executive Committee Members are Tea Temim and Tamara Bogdanovic (replacing Erin Kara and Alexander van der Horst). Mike Corcoran will continue as HEAD Secretary.
- NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission launched at 1 a.m. EST Thursday, December 9 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Congratulations IXPE team!
- NASA announced the selection of the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI), led by John Tomsick (UC Berkeley), as the next small explorer mission. COSI will survey the entire gamma-ray sky every day at energies between 0.2 and 5 MeV, with launch expected in 2025.
- Dr. Allessandra Corsi, Dr. Gregg Hallinan, Dr. Mansi Manoj Kasliwal and Dr. Raffaella Margutti have been awarded the 2022 New Horizons in Physics Prize "For leadership in laying foundations for electromagnetic observations of sources of gravitational waves, and leadership in extracting rich information from the first observed collision of two neutron stars.
- Dr. Victoria Kaspi and Dr. Chryssa Kouveliotou have won the 2021 Shaw Prize in Astronomy, "for their contributions to our understanding of magnetars, a class of highly magnetized neutron stars that are linked to a wide range of spectacular, transient astrophysical phenomena.ties".
- The 18th Divisional Meeting has been Cancelled. The 18th Divisional meeting of the High Energy Astrophysics Division was scheduled to be held at the JW Marriott Tucson Starr Pass Resort & Spa. However, due to the corona virus pandemic, this meeting was cancelled. The HEAD Executive Committee considered holding the 18th meeting as a meeting-in-a-meeting at the 238th AAS meeting in June 2021 in Anchorage. However, since the decision was made that the 238th meeting will be held online (because of the CoVID pandemic), the HEAD Executive Committee has decided not to participate in the virtual meeting. Thus we made the decision to cancel the 18th Divisional meeting. The next HEAD meeting is the 19th Divisional Meeting to be held (we hope) as an in-person meeting in Pittsburgh, in March 2022.
- The HEAD Executive Committee is pleased to announce the following HEAD Award winners: The 2021 Bruno Rossi Prize has been awarded to Francis Halzen and the IceCube Collaboration "for the discovery of a high-energy neutrino flux of astrophysical origin". The 2021 Mid-Career Prize has been awarded to Anna Watts, "for her trailblazing work in the understanding of neutron star fluid dynamics, and developing and applying rigorous inference to obtain observational constraints on dense matter". The 2021 HEAD Dissertation Prize was awarded to Renee Ludlam for her dissertation entitled "A Hard Look at Accretion Around Neutron Stars". Her work showed how accretion disk reflection can be used to place limits on neutron star radii (and therefore the equation of state). The inaugural HEAD Innovation Prize was awarded to Dr. Richard Kelley "for his unflagging effort to make the transformational capabilities of the X-ray microcalorimeter available to the high energy astrophysics community". Congratulations to all the award winners. Please see the HEAD press release for more information.
- We’d like to announce the results of the 2020 HEAD election. Tom Maccarone and Terri Brandt will join the Executive Committee (starting at the end of Business Meeting on Jan 12), replacing Gabriela Gonzalez and Laura Brenneman. We thank Gaby and Laura for their dedication and service to the Division, congratulate Terri and Tom, and would especially like to thank Eric Bellm, Laura Blecha, Francesca Civano, Javier Garcia and Anne Lohfink for their willingness to serve the community
- We have selected 3 finalists for the HEAD Dissertation Prize: Dr. Adi Foord for her thesis "Discovering the Missing Population of AGN Pairs with Chandra"; Dr. Renee Ludlam for her thesis "A Hard Look at Accretion Around Neutron Stars"; and Dr. Guang Yang for his thesis "What Drives the Growth of Black Holes?". Dr. Yang, Dr. Foord and Dr. Ludlam will give presentations at the HEAD I session at the 237th Meeting of the AAS on January 11, after which a prize winner will be chosen.
- Because the 18th Divisional meeting has been delayed to June 2021, the HEAD EC has decided to extend the nomination deadline for the HEAD Dissertation Prize, the HEAD Mid-Career Prize and the HEAD Innovation Prize to August 31, 2020.
- The 2020 David N. Schramm Award for high-energy astrophysics science journalism has been awarded to Steve Nadis for his article entitled His article, "Ripple Effect," which appeared in the May 2019 issue of Discover Magazine. The award was announced via a press release issued on May 13, 2020.
- Dr. Roger Blandford has won the 2020 Shaw Prize in Astronomy, for his foundational contributions to theoretical astrophysics, especially concerning the fundamental understanding of active galactic nuclei, the formation and collimation of relativistic jets, the energy extraction mechanism from black holes, and the acceleration of particles in shocks and their relevant radiation mechanisms
- Dr. Andrew Fabian has won the 2020 Kavli Prize for Astrophysics, for his pioneering research and persistence in pursuing the mystery of how black holes influence their surrounding galaxies on both large and small scales.
- The deadline for nominations to the Dissertation, Mid-Career and Innovation prizes has been extended to June 1, 2020.
- On March 16, 2020, NASA selected for further study the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) and The Extreme-ultraviolet Stellar Characterization for Atmospheric Physics and Evolution (ESCAPE) Small Explorer mission proposals, along with the Gravitational-wave Ultraviolet Counterpart Imager and the LargE Area burst Polarimeter (LEAP) Mission of Opportunity proposals. Two of the proposed missions will be downselected in 2021, with launch anticipated in 2025. See the NASA press release for further details.
- The 2020 Bruno Rossi Prize has been awarded to Sheperd Doeleman and the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Team for "their landmark image and analysis of the first shadow of a black hole. Please see the HEAD Press Release for more information
- The 2020 winter meeting of the AAS, AAS 235, begins on January 4, 2020. A schedule of meeting talks and events of interest to HEAD members is available on the HEAD AAS 235 meeting page.
- On October 22, 2019, eROSITA released first light images using data from all 7 X-ray telescope modules. Congratulations also for the first science publication from ART-XC on their observations of activity from Sgr A*.
- The Space Telescope Science Institute, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, the Johns Hopkins University, European Southern Observatory, and Associated Universities, Inc. are organizing a Memorial Symposium to celebrate the life and work of Riccardo Giacconi. The Symposium will cover the various phases of Riccardo’s career and achievements. It will be held in Washington, DC at the National Academy of Sciences (2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W.) on 29-30 May 2019.
- The 17th Divisional meeting of the High Energy Astrophysics Division took place on 17-21 March 2019 at the Portola Hotel in Monterey, CA. See what people were tweeting about via our official #HEAD2019 hashtag. Thanks to all the attendees who help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the HEAD, along with the celebrations of XMM-Newton, Chandra and Fermi, and who presented excellent science results.
- The HEAD Bylaws have been revised. We'll be discussing the changes in the revised bylaws at the Business Meeting at the Monterey meeting, and members will then have the opportunity to vote to approve adoption.
- The HEAD 2018 election is now closed. Frits Paerels has been elected as HEAD Treasurer, Mike Corcoran will continue as HEAD Secretary, and Erin Kara and Alexander van der Horst have been elected as members of the Executive Committee. Congratulations to Frits, Erin, and Alexander, thanks to all who were willing to be nominated, and thanks to Keith Arnaud, outgoing treasurer, and Niel Brandt and Laura Lopez for their service to the Division.
- We're happy to announce that Josh Sokol has won the 2019 HEAD David Schramm Award for Science Journalism for his article, "Star-Swallowing Black Holes Reveal Secrets in Exotic Light Show" which appeared in Quantum Magazine. Josh will be giving the public talk at the 17th Divisional Meeting in Monterey. Please see the press release for details.
- We're happy to announce the winners of the HEAD Science prizes for 2019. Brian Metzger and Dan Kasen have been awarded the Bruno Rossi Prize, Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz has been awarded the Mid-Career Prize, and Jennifer Barnes has been awarded the Dissertation prize. Please see the press release for details, and our congratulations to Brian and Dan, Enrico and Jennifer.
- We are saddened to report the passing of Dr. Riccardo Giacconi on Sunday 9 December 2018 at the age of 87. Riccardo's career as one of the founders of X-ray astronomy is well known and appreciated by all our community. As noted by Ethan Schreier and Harvey Tananbaum in their memorial, "a very large segment of the astronomy and astrophysics community have based their research on facilities which were conceived, built, and/or directed by Riccardo." Tributes to Riccardo's contributions to science have appeared in the New York Times, the London Telegraph, and other papers the world over.
- On July 12, 2018, IceCube, together with partner telescopes and observatories on Earth and in space, announced the identification of blazar TXS 0506+056 as the first likely source of high-energy neutrinos and cosmic rays.
- NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) reentered Earth's atmosphere on April 30, 2018 at about 14:45 UTC (10:45am EDT). RXTE was launched on December 30, 1995 and had an extraordinarily productive run of scientific time-domain discovery until it was decommissioned in January 2012.
- We are saddened to report the passing of Dr. Yasuo Tanaka on January 18, 2018. Dr. Tanaka was a pioneer in the field of X-ray astronomy, and led the development and operation of important X-ray satellite observatories like GINGA, TENMA and ASCA. Dr. Tanaka was a member of the Japan Academy. Among many awards, Dr. Tanaka received the 2001 Bruno Rossi Prize with Dr. Andrew Fabian for their discovery of relativistically broadened iron lines in ASCA X-ray spectra of active galactic nuclei, and he was also awarded the James Craig Watson Medal by the National Academy of Sciences in 1994 for "his leadership in X-ray astronomy since its beginning, and his crucial role in enabling the U.S./Japanese collaboration in the ASCA mission, a beautiful example of international cooperation in sciences."
- We are pleased to announce that the 2018 Bruno Rossi Prize has been awarded to Dr.Colleen Wilson-Hodge and the Fermi GBM Team, "for the discovery of Gamma-rays coincident with a neutron-star merger gravitational wave event. This confirmed that short gamma-ray bursts are produced by binary neutron-star mergers and enabled a global multi-wavelength follow-up campaign." Please see the HEAD Press Release for additional information.
- HEAD election results are in. Dr. Fiona Harrison has been elected to a 2-year term as HEAD Vice Chair, and Dr. Gabriela Gonzalez and Dr. Laura Brenneman have been elected as members of the HEAD Executive Committee, replacing Dr. Elizabeth Hays and Dr. Colleen Wilson=Hodge. We thank Dr. Hays and Wilson-Hodge for their service to the Division. Dr. Robert Petre is the new HEAD Chair, while Dr. Chris Reynolds is now HEAD Past Chair. We also thank outgoing HEAD Past Chair Nick White for his six years of service to the HEAD, as Vice Chair, Chair and Past Chair.
- We are saddened to note the passing of Dr. Jeffrey McClintock on Nov 8th, 2017. Dr. McClintock worked at the Center for Astrophysics and was a prime authority on X-ray studies of stellar mass black holes. Dr. McClintock was awarded the 2009 Bruno Rossi Prize along with Charles Bailyn and Ron Remillard for the measurement of the masses of Galactic black holes. Dr. McClintock also served on the HEAD Executive Council from 1985-1986.
- NASA has established a study office and study team for LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. LISA is a space-based gravitational wave observatory, and was selected by ESA in June 2017 as the 3rd Large mission in the Cosmic Visions Programme.
- Gravitational and electromagnetic radiation has been detected from a neutron star merger event, GW170817 = GRB170817A.
- Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne have won the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”.
- NASA has selected six astrophysics Explorers Program proposals for concept studies (3 Medium Class missions and 3 Missions of Opportunity). Arcus, a high energy resolution X-ray observatory was one of the three accepted Medium Class mission proposals. The Accepted Missions of Opporunity proposals include COSI-X, a balloon-borne experiment to survey the gamma-ray sky at 0.2-5 MeV and ISS-TAO, a wide-field X-ray transient detector to be berthed on the International Space Station.
- NASA is funding a number of Probe-class mission concept studies to be concluded by early 2019 for inclusion in the 2020 Decadal Survey. These include the following missions: TAP, the Transient Astrophysics Probe (PI Jordan Camp); the Inflation Probe (PI S. Hanany); AXIS, a high spatial resolution X-ray imager (PI Richard Mushotzky); POEMMA, a multi-messenger astrophysics mission (PI Angela Olinto); and STROBE-X, an X-ray timing experiment (PI Paul Ray).
- Dr. Mike Juda was posthumously awarded the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal for his "critical contributions to the effective operation and outstanding scientific productivity of the Chandra X-ray Observatory."
- Dr. Morgan Macleod and Dr. Eric Coughlin are recipients of the International Astronomical Union's PhD prize. Dr. Coughlin (UC Berkeley) won the Division D award for his dissertation "The Evolutionary Pathways of Tidal Disruption Events: from Stars to Debris Streams, Accretion Disks, and Relativistic Jets". Dr. Morgan Macleod (UC Santa Cruz) won the Division G prize for his dissertation "Social Stars: Modeling the Interactive Lives of Stars in Dense Clusters and Binary Systems in the Era of Time Domain Astronomy".
- China launched the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT) on June 15 at 03:00 UT from the 603 Launch Pad of the LC43 Launch Complex. The new orbiting telescope will be used to monitor pulsars and other objects that could help unravel the mystery of their energy sources. Congratulations to the HXMT team.
- The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) X-ray timing observatory was launched as part of the Commercial Resupply Services-11 (CRS-11) mission aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on June 3, 17:07 EDT (21:07 UTC). The Dragon capsule has arrived and has berthed with the ISS, and NICER has now been extracted from the Dragon trunk and has been installed onto the Space Station's ExPRESS Logistics Carrier (ELC 2) Site 7, and is currently being powered up. Please see the NICER Latest News page for updates. Congratulations to the entire NICER team!
- The 2017 HEAD Dissertation Prize is awarded to Dr. Eric Coughlin for his thesis entitled "The Evolutionary Pathways of Tidal Disruption Events: From Stars to Debris Streams, Accretion Disks, and Relativistic Jets". This work has significantly advanced the standard theory of relativistic hydrodynamics and has yielded substantial new results detailing the physical phenomena which occurs when a star falls into a supermassive black hole. This thesis explores all phases of this process, from the initial disruption of the star, through the formation of an accretion flow onto the black hole, to the eventual acceleration of a relativistic jet, and provides an essential framework for a developing field of high energy astrophysics. (Press Release)
- The 2017 HEAD Mid-Career Prize has been awarded to Prof. Jon Miller (U. Michigan) for his seminal high resolution X-ray observations of accreting black hole systems. His work has fundamentally advanced our understanding of accretion disk winds and the dynamics of the in-falling material produced by the tidal disruption of a star by a black hole. As the Mid-Career Prize winner, Prof. Miller will give a plenary talk at the Sun Valley HEAD meeting on this topic preceded by a short prize ceremony. Please see the press release for more information.
- The 2017 David N. Schramm Award for high-energy astrophysics science journalism has been awarded to Nadia Drake for her article entitled "Found! Gravitational Waves, or a Wrinkle in Spacetime", published on the National Geographic's website on February 11, 2016. Please see the press release issued on April 17, 2017 for more information.
- Dr. Neil Gehrels has been named as a Dan David Prize Laureate for 2017. The award statement reads "For being the principal investigator of NASA's Swift Gamma Ray Burst Mission, which has transformed our view of the transient and variable sky in gamma-rays and in X-rays. Under his leadership, Swift has discovered over 1000 of the enigmatic and extreme cosmic explosions called gamma-ray bursts, and has revealed their properties, distances, and environments, well beyond what was previously known, with profound implications for their understanding. It was with great sorrow that we heard of the passing of Prof. Gehrels. The Dan David Prize joins the Astronomy world in mourning. It is an honor to include him in the Dan David Prize Community of laureates." Dr. Gehrels shares the 2017 prize with Prof. Shri Kulkarni and Prof. Andrzej Udalski.
- NASA has selected the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission as the latest Explorer mission. IXPE will fly three space telescopes with cameras capable of measuring the polarization of these cosmic X-rays. Dr. Martin Weisskopf of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center will lead the mission as Principal Investigator, while Ball Aerospace in Broomfield, Colorado will provide the spacecraft and mission integration, and the Italian Space Agency will contribute the polarization sensitive X-ray detectors. Congratulations to Dr. Weisskopf and the entire IXPE team.
- Dr. Gabriela González and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration have been awarded the 2017 Bruno Rossi Prize "for the first direct detections of gravitational waves, for the discovery of merging black hole binaries, and for beginning the new era of gravitational-wave astronomy." Please see the press release for more information.
- Dr. Victoria Kaspi (McGill) was appointed to the Order of Canada. The Order of Canada was created in 1967 and is one of Canada's highest civilian honors and recognizes outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation.
- Dr. Gabriela González (LSU) was named one of Nature's 10, "Ten people who mattered this year".
- Neil Cornish (Montana State) and Kristin Madsen (Caltech) are the new HEAD executive committee members, replacing Daniel Wang and Mark Bautz, whose terms are ending. We'd like to thank both Daniel and Mark for their valued service to the HEA community as executive committee members over the past three years, and welcome Kristin and Neil.
- The Fall 2016 HEAD newsletter is available.
- HEAD members Dr. Megan Donahue, Dr. Ann Hornschemeier, and Dr. Richard Kelley have been elected APS Fellows.
- The new AAS headquarters address is 1667 K Street NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20006 USA.
- Dr. Fiona Harrison has been awarded the 2016 COSPAR Harrie Massey Award, awarded by the Committee on Space Research, for "outstanding contributions to the development of space research in which a leadership role is of particular importance"
- Dr. Phil Plait has been awarded the 2016 David N. Schramm award from the High Energy Astrophysics Division (HEAD) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). The winning article is entitled “A Supermassive Black Hole’s Fiery and Furious Wind” and appeared on Slate.com on February 25, 2015.
- Former HEAD Chair Professor Roger Blandford has been awarded the 2016 Crafoord Prize for Astronomy in company with Professor Roy Kerr "for fundamental work concerning rotating black holes and their astrophysical consequences".
- New HEAD Executive Committee member Professor Laura Lopez is the recipient of the 2016 Annie Jump Cannon Award.
- The following HEAD prizes were announced at the business meeting on January 6th, 2016: the Dissertation Prize will go to Dr. Ashley King; the first Mid-Career Prize to Professor Sebastian Heinz; and the Rossi Prize to Professor Niel Brandt. Dr King and Professor Heinz gaive their prize lectures at the HEAD Divisional meeting in Naples, FL. Professor Brandt will give the Rossi Prize lecture at the 229th AAS meeting, to be held in January 2017 in Grapevine, TX.
- The results of the elections to the HEAD Executive Committee are as follows: Dr. Rob Petre is the new Vice-Chair; Dr. Mike Corcoran the Secretary; Dr. Keith Arnaud the Treasurer; Professors Niel Brandt and Laura Lopez were elected as members of the Executive Committee. The new Chair is Professor Chris Reynolds and the past-Chair Dr Nick White.