Duke Astrophysicist Named 2023 ‘Einstein Fellow’

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Duke postdoctoral researcher Maria Vincenzi has won a prestigious astrophysics fellowship from NASA.

Collectively, these surveys will observe more supernovae in their first months than have been observed in the past two decades.

“It's a very exciting time for my field,” Vincenzi said. “We are just at the beginning of a new era of experiments that are going to give us orders of magnitudes more data than what we have now.”

According to a press release, the NASA Hubble Fellowship Program “fosters excellence and leadership in NASA astrophysics by supporting some of the most promising and innovative young astrophysicists.”

Roughly 450 applicants vied for this year’s fellowships, and Vincenzi was one of 24 people selected. The fellowship will provide her with three years of support.

Vincenzi came to Duke in the fall of 2021 as a postdoctoral researcher working with physics professor Dan Scolnic. Prior to joining Duke, Vincenzi earned a Ph.D. from England’s University of Portsmouth, where she won awards from the Royal Astronomical Society, the Universities Research Association and Fermilab for best doctoral thesis. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from the University of Milan in Italy.

“Maria is an inspiration to a lot of younger astronomers in our community,” Scolnic said.