Category Archives: News and Announcements

CASCA is pleased to announce Dr. Kiyoshi Masui as the recipient of the 2023 Harvey B. Richer Gold Medal, in recognition of significant and sustained early career research in astronomy.

Dr. Masui obtained his PhD from the University of Toronto and is currently an Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He has played a key leadership role in both the CHIME and CHIME/FRB Collaborations, both technically and scientifically, and contributed substantially to the success of these world-leading projects. At the same time, he has provided exceptional mentorship and training to the young scientists working on these projects. His contributions have demonstrated impressive breadth, from instrumentation development to scientific data analysis, theory, and interpretation, and from 21 cm cosmology to fast radio bursts (FRBs). Dr. Masui has made pioneering and high-impact contributions to our understanding of the FRB phenomenon, for example by leading the publication of the first CHIME/FRB catalog which enabled the discovery of key scientific properties of the FRB population. As project scientist, he is currently leading CHIME’s next major instrumentation effort, CHIME/FRB Outriggers.

CASCA is delighted to recognize Dr. Masui’s achievements with this award.

CASCA is pleased to announce Dr. Deborah Lokhorst as the recipient of the 2023 J.S. Plaskett Medal for the most outstanding doctoral thesis in astronomy or astrophysics.

Dr. Lokhorst received her PhD in 2022 under the supervision of Dr. Roberto Abraham at the University of Toronto, and she is now a Herzberg Instrument Science Fellow at NRC Herzberg Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Centre. Her thesis titled “Ultra-Narrowband Imaging with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array: Toward the Cosmic Web” is a tour-de-force combining theory, observation, and instrumentation. Dr. Lokhorst played a central role in the construction and scientific exploitation of the Dragonfly Telephoto Array, opening a new window on the ‘low surface brightness Universe’. Her thesis work began with an analysis of hydrodynamical simulations to understand the observational limits needed to directly detect ‘invisible’ gas in the circumgalactic medium (CGM) around nearby galaxies. She then designed, machined, and assembled the prototype of a new component of the Dragonfly Telephoto Array, the ‘Filter-Tilter’, to allow the required limits to be achieved. She finally obtained the first scientific observations taken by a pathfinder Dragonfly narrowband imager, discovering a giant ionized gas cloud in the CGM of the starburst galaxy M82.

CASCA is delighted to recognize Dr. Lokhorst’s achievements with this award.

CASCA is pleased to announce Dr. Erik Rosolowsky as the recipient of the 2023 Peter G. Martin Award for mid-career achievement.

Dr. Rosolowsky received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, studying the formation of molecular clouds in nearby galaxies, and he is currently a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Alberta.

In his impactful career, he has been an international leader in the study of star formation in both Galactic and extragalactic contexts and has made several novel contributions to data analysis techniques that have enabled significant research by others. Dr. Rosolowsky has demonstrated growing leadership in these fields, notably through the international, multi-observatory “Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby Galaxies” (PHANGS) megaproject. His earlier work on Galactic star formation produced several key publications that led the way to future large-scale surveys of emission from star-forming clouds and introduced “dendograms” as a new way of defining structure in hierarchical systems, a method now widely used throughout the community. His research in extragalactic star formation followed a similar pattern, leading or being a major contributor to seminal surveys that took advantage of the rise of high-resolution instruments over the last decade to drive forward our understanding of the formation of the molecular ISM and stars in distant galaxies.

CASCA is delighted to recognize Dr. Rosolowsky’s achievements with this award.

CASCA is pleased to announce Dr. You-Hua Chu, Distinguished Research Fellow at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA), as the 2023 R.M Petrie Prize Lecturer.

Dr. You-Hua Chu is an international leader in the studies of the interstellar medium, star formation and feedback, supernova progenitors and environments, and dusty disks around white dwarfs. She is an expert on both the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds, having extensively researched the whole diverse population of these galaxies throughout her career. She makes use of both multi-wavelength observations (radio, infrared, optical and X-ray) and modelling to address fundamental questions about the fate of stars, their interaction with the interstellar medium and the evolution of galaxies in the nearby Universe. Throughout her career, Dr. You-Hua Chu has demonstrated outstanding leadership in the astronomical community on multiple continents and was notably the first woman to serve as Director of ASIAA.

CASCA is honoured to have Dr. You-Hua Chu give the Petrie Prize lecture.