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iRubric: Research Paper Presentation rubric

• Power Point Presentation
• Arts and Design
• Communication
• Engineering
• Foreign Languages
• Physical Ed., Fitness
• Political Science
• Social Sciences
• Presentation

Eberly Center

Teaching excellence & educational innovation, creating and using rubrics.

A rubric is a scoring tool that explicitly describes the instructor’s performance expectations for an assignment or piece of work. A rubric identifies:

• criteria: the aspects of performance (e.g., argument, evidence, clarity) that will be assessed
• descriptors: the characteristics associated with each dimension (e.g., argument is demonstrable and original, evidence is diverse and compelling)
• performance levels: a rating scale that identifies students’ level of mastery within each criterion  

Rubrics can be used to provide feedback to students on diverse types of assignments, from papers, projects, and oral presentations to artistic performances and group projects.

Benefitting from Rubrics

• reduce the time spent grading by allowing instructors to refer to a substantive description without writing long comments
• help instructors more clearly identify strengths and weaknesses across an entire class and adjust their instruction appropriately
• help to ensure consistency across time and across graders
• reduce the uncertainty which can accompany grading
• discourage complaints about grades
• understand instructors’ expectations and standards
• use instructor feedback to improve their performance
• monitor and assess their progress as they work towards clearly indicated goals
• recognize their strengths and weaknesses and direct their efforts accordingly

Examples of Rubrics

Here we are providing a sample set of rubrics designed by faculty at Carnegie Mellon and other institutions. Although your particular field of study or type of assessment may not be represented, viewing a rubric that is designed for a similar assessment may give you ideas for the kinds of criteria, descriptions, and performance levels you use on your own rubric.

• Example 1: Philosophy Paper This rubric was designed for student papers in a range of courses in philosophy (Carnegie Mellon).
• Example 2: Psychology Assignment Short, concept application homework assignment in cognitive psychology (Carnegie Mellon).
• Example 3: Anthropology Writing Assignments This rubric was designed for a series of short writing assignments in anthropology (Carnegie Mellon).
• Example 4: History Research Paper . This rubric was designed for essays and research papers in history (Carnegie Mellon).
• Example 1: Capstone Project in Design This rubric describes the components and standards of performance from the research phase to the final presentation for a senior capstone project in design (Carnegie Mellon).
• Example 2: Engineering Design Project This rubric describes performance standards for three aspects of a team project: research and design, communication, and team work.

Oral Presentations

• Example 1: Oral Exam This rubric describes a set of components and standards for assessing performance on an oral exam in an upper-division course in history (Carnegie Mellon).
• Example 2: Oral Communication This rubric is adapted from Huba and Freed, 2000.
• Example 3: Group Presentations This rubric describes a set of components and standards for assessing group presentations in history (Carnegie Mellon).

Class Participation/Contributions

• Example 1: Discussion Class This rubric assesses the quality of student contributions to class discussions. This is appropriate for an undergraduate-level course (Carnegie Mellon).
• Example 2: Advanced Seminar This rubric is designed for assessing discussion performance in an advanced undergraduate or graduate seminar.

See also " Examples and Tools " section of this site for more rubrics.

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Paper Presentation Grading Rubric (by David Duvenaud)

Your main concern in this presentation should be clarity. It’s OK not to cover everything in the paper, and it’s often a good idea to spend most of your presentation setting up the background necessary to understand the main idea of the paper.

It’s also OK to re-use materials from other people’s presentations, as long as you clearly attribute them on the same slide . However, you’ll need to understand the material well enough to answer questions no matter what.

Say the first sentence of your presentation without saying any filler words or sounds: 5% For instance, saying “Hi, I’m [name], and our presentation is about [paper]” without saying “Um” will get you full marks. If you say “Um” or”Uh” at any point before the end of your first sentence, even to get the audience’s attention, you get no marks for this part.

Provide the necessary background to understand the main contribution of the paper: 20% This could be most of your presentation. Try not to show any math that you don’t have time to explain. But it’s OK to gloss over a big equation just saying “and the expression for this is complicated”, or “this is the regularization term”.

Related work: 15% You can leave this until the end, if you like, but you should list the main papers that this work built on, any similar papers that came out at the same time, and notable papers that built on this work.

Explain the main ideas of the paper clearly: 20% Don’t be afraid to have a slide saying “this is the main idea”. The hard part is waiting until the audience is ready to understand it. Often it’s a good idea to say the main idea at the beginning, explain the background, then revisit the main idea at the end.

Explain the scope and limitations of the approach, or open questions 10% . Also feel free to talk about what you personally found confusing, was unnecessarily complicated, or questions that were raised in your mind.

Show a visual representation of one of the ideas from the paper: 5% This can just be a figure from the paper, or a demo.

Get feedback on your presentation from the instructor or TA: 5% Meet with one of us a few days before the presentation and give a draft version of your presentation so we can give feedback.

Original content: 10% I’m not expecting every group to do this. But providing an original demo, animation, figure, or connection is necessary to get an A+.

Finish under time: 10% I will cut you off at the agreed upon time limit! However, questions or interjections won’t count against your time. A TA will be keeping track of presentation time and will let you know your remaining time.

Center for Teaching Innovation

Resource library.

• AACU VALUE Rubrics

Using rubrics

A rubric is a type of scoring guide that assesses and articulates specific components and expectations for an assignment. Rubrics can be used for a variety of assignments: research papers, group projects, portfolios, and presentations.  

Why use rubrics? 

Rubrics help instructors: 

• Assess assignments consistently from student-to-student. 
• Save time in grading, both short-term and long-term. 
• Give timely, effective feedback and promote student learning in a sustainable way. 
• Clarify expectations and components of an assignment for both students and course teaching assistants (TAs). 
• Refine teaching methods by evaluating rubric results. 

Rubrics help students: 

• Understand expectations and components of an assignment. 
• Become more aware of their learning process and progress. 
• Improve work through timely and detailed feedback. 

Considerations for using rubrics 

When developing rubrics consider the following:

• Although it takes time to build a rubric, time will be saved in the long run as grading and providing feedback on student work will become more streamlined.  
• A rubric can be a fillable pdf that can easily be emailed to students. 
• They can be used for oral presentations. 
• They are a great tool to evaluate teamwork and individual contribution to group tasks. 
• Rubrics facilitate peer-review by setting evaluation standards. Have students use the rubric to provide peer assessment on various drafts. 
• Students can use them for self-assessment to improve personal performance and learning. Encourage students to use the rubrics to assess their own work. 
• Motivate students to improve their work by using rubric feedback to resubmit their work incorporating the feedback. 

Getting Started with Rubrics 

• Start small by creating one rubric for one assignment in a semester.  
• Ask colleagues if they have developed rubrics for similar assignments or adapt rubrics that are available online. For example, the  AACU has rubrics  for topics such as written and oral communication, critical thinking, and creative thinking. RubiStar helps you to develop your rubric based on templates.  
• Examine an assignment for your course. Outline the elements or critical attributes to be evaluated (these attributes must be objectively measurable). 
• Create an evaluative range for performance quality under each element; for instance, “excellent,” “good,” “unsatisfactory.” 
• Avoid using subjective or vague criteria such as “interesting” or “creative.” Instead, outline objective indicators that would fall under these categories. 
• The criteria must clearly differentiate one performance level from another. 
• Assign a numerical scale to each level. 
• Give a draft of the rubric to your colleagues and/or TAs for feedback. 
• Train students to use your rubric and solicit feedback. This will help you judge whether the rubric is clear to them and will identify any weaknesses. 
• Rework the rubric based on the feedback. 

CS 224C Logistics

Stanford / spring 2024.

• Project (55%): Divided into proposal (10%), midway report (15%), final submission (25%), project pitch (2.5%), and poster presentation (2.5%).
• Presentation (10%): Engage with your subject matter and peers through presentations.
• Homework (20%): Four assignments, each worth 5%, designed to reinforce core material.
• Participation (2%): Involvement in discussions, presentations, and project teamwork.
• Reading Responses (13.5%): 9 responses, each contributing 1.5%, to foster engagement and critical thinking.

This is the system we will use at the end of the quarter to map numerical final grades to letter grades. No curve is applied, and there are no other factors shaping the mapping from weighted averages ( details here ) to letter grades.

Reading Responses

A short (2-paragraph) written response to each reading to be posted the day before class.

The response should not focus on summarizing the papers, but instead raise questions that would be appropriate for discussion, or propose ideas to think about. The goal is to get you to think critically about the research that a paper presents and why that research is important.

• why the work is/isn't novel/important in terms of data/method/topic
• critique certain features of the reading
• identify potentially important issues not covered in the reading
• how the paper has changed your opinion or outlook on a topic
• suggest new research questions inspired by the reading, or think about new ways to improve the work
• Check-minus (85%) : Surface-level engagement with the readings, or a repeat of a style of critique that the staff told the class to avoid. Examples of surface-level engagement include: comments about whether the student likes or would use the technology, a summary of the paper rather than a reflections on the ideas, or critiques that engage only obliquely with the paper or indicate that the author didn't fully read it.
• Check (100%) : Effective engagement with the readings. Example responses involving check grades often indicate that they understand the main ideas of the papers, and the reflections are reasonably nontrivial observations worth discussing.
• Check-plus (105%) : Excellent engagement with the readings. Check-plus grades are reserved for rare instances where a reading response really hits on an interesting, unique, and insightful point of view worth sharing.

Role-Playing Paper Reading & Discussion

More information and details: Role-Playing Seminar

You are the instructor who needs to provide a comprehensive overview of the paper. What did it study? What’s the novelty? What’s the methods and results?

The papers have not been published yet and is currently submitted to a top conference where you’ve been assigned as a peer reviewer. Complete a full review of the paper answering all prompts “strengths, weaknesses, questions”

You’re a researcher who is working on a new project in this area. Propose an imaginary follow-up project not just based on the current but only possible due to the existence and success of the current paper.

You work at a company or organization developing an application or product of your choice (that has not already been suggested in a prior session). Bring a convincing pitch for why you should be paid to implement the method in the paper, and discuss at least one positive and negative impact of this application.

Identify how this paper self-assesses its (likely positive) impact on the world. Have any additional positive social impacts left out? What are possible negative social impacts that were overlooked or omitted?

You’re a hacker who needs a demo of this paper ASAP. Implement a small part or simplified version of the paper on a small dataset or toy problem. Prepare to share the core code of the algorithm to the class and demo your implementation. Do not simply download and run an existing implementation – though you are welcome to use (and give credit to) an existing implementation for “backbone” code.

Presentation

• The group works together to deliver a presentation
• Work together to well cover the material
• Make easy-to-understand slides
• Be prepared for Q&As
• Please send your draft slides to the instructor/TA 1 day before the class

Grading: 5 points (group), 5 points (each role)

Class Participation

• Class participation grades are based on whether you productively contribute to the classroom discussions in lecture. This grade also captures your contributions in the presentation and leading discussion section. Finally, participation grades will also take into account how actively you contribute to the success of your project alongside your teammates.
• Please check out the details of the course project here .
• Please discuss your project idea with instructor/TA early on in the course.
• Literature Review
• Experiment Protocol
• Final Paper
• Literature Review: Due Monday, Jan 30, 5:00PM Thursday, Jan 26, 5:00pm
• Experiment Protocol: Due Thursday, Feb 16, 5:00pm
• Final Paper: Due Tuesday, March 21, 5:00pm

Academic Honesty

Please familiarize yourself with Stanford's honor code . We will adhere to it and follow through on its penalty guidelines.

• It is expected that you accurately represent your own work and the work of others in this class. Ideas should be your own. Any use of tools (e.g., ChatGPT) should be limited to clarity and credited appropriately in your submission.
• Each student will have a total of 6 free late (calendar) days applicable to any assignment (including the lit review and project milestone) except the final project paper . Final project papers cannot be turned in late under any circumstances.
• Free late days can be used at any time, no questions asked. Each 24 hours or part thereof that a homework is late uses up one full late day. Once these late days are exhausted, any homework or quiz turned in late will be penalized 10% per late day.
• If a group's assignment is late n days, then each group member is charged n late days.
• Late days are never transferrable between students, even students in the same group.
• Late days do not apply to the final submission of the course project/
• Reading responses do not have late days (since they are a prerequisite for coming to class, so responses posted after 5pm the day before class will count as not turned in.)

Policy on Submitting Related Final Projects to Multiple Classes

On the one hand, we want to encourage you to pursue unified interdisciplinary projects that weave together themes from multiple classes. On the other hand, we need to ensure that final projects for this course are original and involve a substantial new effort.

To try to meet both these demands, we are adopting the following policy on joint submission: if your final project for this course is related to your final project for another course, you are required to submit both projects to us by our final project due date. If we decide that the projects are too similar, your project will receive a failing grade. To avoid this extreme outcome, we strongly encourage you to stay in close communication with us if your project is related to another you are submitting for credit, so that there are no unhappy surprises at the end of the term. Since there is no single objective standard for what counts as "different enough", it is better to play it safe by talking with us.

Fundamentally, we are saying that combining projects is not a shortcut. In a sense, we are in the same position as professional conferences and journals, which also need to watch out for multiple submissions. You might have a look at the ACL/NAACL policy , which strives to ensure that any two papers submitted to those conferences make substantially different contributions – our goal here as well.

It is very important to us that all assignments are properly graded. The teaching staff works extremely hard to grade fairly and to turn around assignments quickly. We know what you work hard, and we respect that. Occasionally, mistakes happen, and it's important to us to correct them. If you believe there is an error in your assignment grading, please submit an explanation in writing to the staff within seven days of receiving the grade. We will regrade the entire assignment to ensure quality.

• No regrade requests will be accepted orally, and no regrade requests will be accepted more than seven days after receipt of the assignment. Regrade requests must be respectful; we will not consider any regrade requests containing disrespectful language.

Names and Pronouns

• Use the names and pronouns (e.g., they/them, she/her, he/him, just a name, or something else) indicated by your classmates for themselves. If you don’t want to share a set of pronouns for yourself, that is perfectly acceptable, too. If your name or pronouns change during the course, we invite you to share this with us and/or other students, so we may talk with you and refer to your ideas in discussion as you would wish.

Do not include words like a, and, for, the, etc.

Advanced Query Syntax

Due to a planned outage on Friday, April 12th starting at noon through Sunday, April 14th, access to other Institute resources from this site may be unavailable during this time. We apologize for any inconvenience.

2024 NHFP Fellows

Meet the 2024 nasa hubble fellowship program fellows, jaren ashcraft.

Host Institution: University of California, Santa Barbara

Proposal Title: Optimizing the Vector Field for Next-generation Astrophysics

Jaren Ashcraft grew up on the Big Island of Hawai'i. He earned his bachelor’s degree in optical engineering from the University of Rochester in 2019, and master’s in optical sciences from the University of Arizona in 2022. Jaren is currently pursuing his doctorate in optical sciences at the University of Arizona supervised by Dr. Ewan Douglas, and will graduate in the summer of 2024.

As a Sagan Fellow at UCSB, Jaren will study how optical polarization can limit the ability of next-generation observatories to directly image Earth-like exoplanets. This phenomenon, known as polarization aberration, is particularly problematic for the ground-based 30-meter Extremely Large Telescopes and the future space-based Habitable Worlds Observatory. Jaren will construct integrated optical models to assess the sensitivity of coronagraphs to the polarization aberrations of these observatories. He will then explore strategies to mitigate the influence of polarization aberrations on astronomical observations, including investigating novel technologies like metasurfaces and liquid crystals to serve as compensators.

Vishal Baibhav

Host Institution: Columbia University

Proposal Title: Dancing with Black Holes: Harnessing Gravitational Waves to Understand the Formation of Black Holes

Vishal Baibhav grew up near New Delhi, India. He earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati in 2016. In 2021, he earned his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University under the supervision of Professor Emanuele Berti. His research focused on black hole spectroscopy and gravitational-wave astrophysics. Currently, he is a CIERA postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University.

Despite breakthrough detections of compact-object mergers by LIGO, Virgo, and Kagra detectors, the birthplace and the origin of these compact objects remain unknown. Vishal's research is focused on fundamental questions such as how, when, and where these binaries form, and what physics drives their evolution. He is interested in understanding the life of stars that evolved into merging black holes and the environments that nurtured them. With future gravitational-wave detections, Vishal aims to address key questions about the formation of compact objects, specifically how black holes and neutron stars acquire their spins. As an Einstein Fellow, he will explore whether these spins are inherited from progenitor stars, or if stochastic processes and natal kicks during core collapse play a significant role in shaping them.

Kiersten Boley

Host Institution: Carnegie Earth and Planets Laboratory

Proposal Title:  Identifying the Key Materials for Planet Formation and Evolution

Kiersten Boley grew up in Rome, Georgia. She earned her associate’s in physics at Georgia Highlands College before transferring to Georgia Institute of Technology where she earned her bachelor’s in physics in 2019.  Kiersten earned a master’s degree in astronomy at The Ohio State University in 2021. She spent 2022 as an IPAC visiting graduate student at Caltech, working with Dr. Jessie Christiansen. Currently, Kiersten is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at The Ohio State University where she will earn her doctorate in astronomy in May 2024, advised by Professor Ji Wang, Professor Wendy Panero, and Dr. Jessie Christiansen.

Kiersten’s research investigates how elemental abundances impact planet formation and interior evolution through planet detection and interior modeling. Her interdisciplinary research aims to determine the materials required for planet formation by planet type and how their mineral compositions may impact the long-term evolution and habitability of rocky planets. As a Sagan Fellow, Kiersten will continue to study exoplanets through population studies focused on unraveling the dependence of planet formation on galactic location and stellar abundance using observational data. Additionally, she will investigate the long-term evolution and water cycling on rocky planets using theoretical interior models based on experimental data.

Michael Calzadilla

Host Institution: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Proposal Title: A Multiwavelength View of the Evolving Baryon Cycle in Galaxy Clusters

Michael Calzadilla grew up in Tampa, Florida. As a first-generation college student, he earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of South Florida in 2015. He subsequently crossed the pond to complete a master’s degree in astronomy as a Gates Cambridge scholar under the guidance of Professor Andrew Fabian at the University of Cambridge. Michael will complete his doctorate in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in May 2024 with his advisor Professor Michael McDonald.

Michael’s work focuses on multiwavelength observations of galaxy clusters to study the baryon cycle that drives the evolution of all galaxies. The largest galaxies residing in these clusters grow via material cooling from their hot atmospheres, which is balanced by feedback from star formation and active galactic nuclei. As part of the South Pole Telescope collaboration, Michael’s work is among the first to leverage recent Sunyaev-Zeldovich-based detections of galaxy clusters to observe this cycling of material out to unprecedented redshifts.

As a Hubble Fellow, Michael will develop machine learning techniques for characterizing the thousands of galaxy clusters being discovered by next-generation cosmological surveys resulting in clean, unbiased samples of the earliest galaxy clusters. Using synergies with large X-ray, optical, and radio datasets, he will seek to answer when galaxy clusters first dynamically relaxed, and how the effectiveness of supermassive black hole feedback has changed over time. He will also use new observatories for more targeted follow-up to investigate the role of feedback-induced turbulence in regulating galaxy growth.

Sanskriti Das

Host Institution: Stanford University

Proposal Title: Where the Energetic Universe Meets the Hot Universe

Sanskriti grew up in India and earned her bachelor’s in physics at Presidency University Kolkata in 2015, and her master's in physics at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 2017. She earned her doctorate in astronomy from The Ohio State University, USA in 2022. Since then, she has been an independent postdoctoral fellow at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University.

Sanskriti is interested in the co-evolution of galactic disks and the circumgalactic medium (CGM) through multiphase gas cycles between the disk and the CGM. Faint diffuse CGM signals tend to hide behind bright, variable, and complex backgrounds. Sanskriti devises innovative observing strategies and develops novel data reduction and analysis techniques to extract that signal. Using millimeter and X-ray telescopes, she looks for the hot CGM, the reservoir of baryons, metals, and energy missing from the stars and interstellar medium (ISM). She studies cold CGM using radio telescopes, looking for the accreting raw material for star formation that is missing from the ISM. She uses multiwavelength (radio, UV, optical, IR, and X-ray) data to study the corresponding galactic disks and connect their properties with the CGM. She is passionate about the history of astronomy and is actively involved in mentoring, outreach, and resolving gender inequity in astronomy as well.

As a Hubble Fellow, Sanskriti is excited to unravel the integrated impact of galactic feedback on the CGM using multiwavelength observations, and inform the next generation of millimeter and X-ray missions.

Jordy Davelaar

Host Institution: Princeton University

Proposal Title: Unraveling the Physics of Accreting Black Hole Binaries

Jordy Davelaar was born and raised in The Netherlands in a small country village called De Klomp. He obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics and astronomy at Radboud University in Nijmegen. In 2020, Jordy earned his doctorate in astrophysics from Radboud, where he worked under the supervision of Monika Mościbrodkza and Heino Falcke. After graduation, he has been a joint postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University and the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics.

Jordy’s primary research focus is modeling the emission produced in the accretion flows of supermassive black holes. To this end, he combines high-performance computing magnetofluid simulations with radiation transfer methods. His work on black hole accretion flows is used to interpret millimeter, near-infrared, and radio observations, e.g. the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration. More recently, Jordy started developing binary black hole models, aiming to predict electromagnetic signatures of Laser Interferometer Space Antenna targets with Chandra, XMM-Newton, and Athena.

A critical component to understanding where and how black holes merge and how they shape galactic evolution is host galaxy identification, which relies on electromagnetic observations. However, the field is still debating major theoretical uncertainties regarding the interaction of the binary with its environment and the potential signatures it might produce. As an Einstein Fellow at Princeton University, Jordy will develop novel accretion flow simulations of merging black hole binaries to identify tell-tale electromagnetic signatures and unravel the physics of accreting black hole binaries.

Alexander Dittmann

Host Institution: Institute for Advanced Study

Proposal Title: Bridging the Gap in Supermassive Black Hole Binary Accretion - From Simulation to Observation

Alexander Dittmann grew up in northern Virginia. He earned undergraduate degrees in physics and astronomy from the University of Illinois in 2018, after which he joined the Astronomy Department at the University of Maryland. He has also worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Center for Computational Astrophysics, and will complete his doctorate under the guidance of Cole Miller in April 2024.

Following his broad interests in high-energy astrophysics and fluid dynamics, Alexander has studied a variety of astrophysical topics from the origins of planetary spins to the final moments of binary supermassive black holes. He has also used data from NASA’s NICER telescope to measure the radii of neutron stars, gleaning insight into the enigmatic nature of matter within their cores. As an Einstein Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, he will leverage cutting-edge simulations and his experience in astrostatistics to connect theoretical studies of binary black holes to the forthcoming bounty of time-domain observations of active galactic nuclei. 

Cristhian Garcia-Quintero

Host Institution: Harvard University

Proposal Title: Phenomenological Modified Gravity in the Non-linear Regime and Improving BAO Measurements with Stage-IV Surveys

Cristhian Garcia-Quintero was born and raised in Culiacán, Sinaloa, México. He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from the Autonomous University of Sinaloa in 2017. While still an undergraduate student, Cristhian was selected for an internship program, co-funded by the U.S. embassy in Mexico, allowing him to conduct research at The University of Texas at Dallas, where he returned to pursue his doctorate in physics in 2018 under the guidance of Professor Mustapha Ishak.

Cristhian's research is focused on large-scale structure analyses to improve our understanding of cosmology using ongoing and upcoming galaxy surveys. Cristhian is interested in testing the standard model of cosmology using current and future cosmological data while particularly emphasizing phenomenological modified gravity tests and data-driven approaches. Cristhian is heavily involved in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) where he has contributed to the Baryons Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) analysis. Cristhian is also working towards performing cosmological analyses based on cross-correlations between DESI and other surveys.

As an Einstein Fellow, Cristhian will extend his work on modified gravity to explore tests of gravity beyond the linear regime. Additionally, Cristhian will work towards improving the BAO measurements for DESI year 5 analysis and perform analyses that can benefit from synergies between Stage-IV surveys.

Amelia (Lia) Hankla

Host Institution: University of Maryland, College Park

Proposal Title: Explaining Radio to X-ray Observations of Luminous Black Holes with a Multizone Outflowing Corona Model

Lia Hankla grew up in Lafayette, Colorado. She earned her bachelor’s degree in physics and a minor in oboe performance from Princeton University in 2017 and then spent a year in Heidelberg, Germany as a Fulbright Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. In 2018, Lia returned home to Colorado for her doctorate in physics, where she collaborated with Jason Dexter, Mitch Begelman, and Dmitri Uzdensky with the support of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. After completing her doctorate in the summer of 2023, Lia joined the University of Maryland, College Park as a Joint Space-Sciences Institute Postdoctoral Fellow and a Multimessenger Plasma Physics Center Fellow.

Lia is interested in anything involving plasmas and black holes, especially accretion disks and their surrounding coronae. Although these plasmas just outside the event horizon hold the key to unraveling how black holes evolved over time, they remain poorly understood because of the difficulty connecting small-scale particle processes to the global scales of the entire accretion disk and corona. Interpreting observations of radio to X-ray emission from around luminous black holes requires understanding how and where magnetic energy dissipates into plasma particle energy.

As an Einstein Fellow, Lia will decipher how these dissipation processes, including turbulence and magnetic reconnection, can further our understanding of nonthermal particle acceleration and winds in accretion disks and coronae. Her research aims to shed light on recent spectral timing and X-ray polarization observations of both stellar-mass and supermassive black holes, and to resolve long-standing questions regarding these mysterious objects in our universe.

Cheng-Han Hsieh

Host Institution: The University of Texas at Austin

Proposal Title: A Deep Dive into the Early Evolution of Protoplanetary Disk Substructures and the Onset of Planet and Star Formation

Cheng-Han Hsieh grew up in Taichung City, Taiwan, and earned his undergraduate degree in physics from National Tsing Hua University in 2018. He stayed at Yale for his graduate studies and will complete his doctorate in the summer of 2024 under the supervision of Professor Héctor G. Arce.

Cheng-Han’s research focuses on using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to characterize the substructure evolution within protostellar disks, where young stars and planets are forming. These substructures manifest varied natures - some potentially sculpted by pre-existing planets, while others, such as dense rings, may act as nurseries for the formation of planetesimals and subsequent planet generations. In particular, he is interested in pinpointing the early formation of disk substructures, which traces the onset of planet formation. As a Sagan Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, Cheng-Han will undertake a comprehensive statistical study of disk substructures around the youngest protostars, discerning the relationship between circumstellar disk properties and the primordial conditions of planetary systems. Ultimately, he aims to chart the full trajectory of giant planet formation.

Proposal Title: The Role of Magnetic Fields in Galaxy Cluster's Diffuse Structure Formation

Yue Hu grew up in Yuxi City, Yunnan, China. He earned dual bachelor’s degrees in automation engineering from Tongji University and the University of Bologna in 2018. Yue is poised to earn his doctorate in astrophysics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in spring 2024, supervised by Professor Alexandre Lazarian. During his doctorate, he developed innovative techniques for tracing 3D magnetic fields across various astrophysical conditions.

Yue's research focuses on the ubiquitous turbulence and magnetic fields in astrophysics, bridging the gap from the microscopic physics of cosmic rays to the macroscopic evolution of galaxy clusters. His work employs a blend of MHD turbulence theories, numerical simulations, and physics-informed machine-learning approaches. He has mapped the megaparsec-scale magnetic field in the El Gordo cluster using the synchrotron intensity gradient technique and MeerKAT radio observations.

As a Hubble Fellow, Yue will explore the role of magnetic fields in the evolution and formation of galaxy clusters, using cosmological simulations, and radio observations from VLA, LOFAR, and MeerKAT, alongside X-ray observations from Chandra and XMM-Newton. He aims to deepen our understanding of the magnetized galaxy clusters, which are among the universe's largest gravitationally bound structures. The research will also facilitate predictive models for the Square Kilometre Array and the Lynx X-ray observatory.

Wynn Jacobson-Galán

Host Institution: California Institute of Technology

Proposal Title: Final Moments: Uncovering the Rate of Enhanced Red Supergiant Mass-loss in the Local Volume

Wynn Jacobson-Galán grew up in Los Angeles where he attended Santa Monica Community College before completing a bachelor’s degree in physics at UC Santa Cruz in 2018. Wynn was an IDEAS Fellow at Northwestern University where he earned a master’s degree in 2021. Wynn is currently an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at UC Berkeley under the supervision of Professor Raffaella Margutti and will finish his doctorate in summer 2024.

Wynn’s research focuses on combining multi-wavelength observations (radio to X-ray) of a variety of supernova types to create a complete picture of the final stages of stellar instability and mass-loss before explosion. His primary interest is the utilization of ultra-rapid observations of young supernovae in order to bridge the gap between stellar life and death. As a Hubble Fellow, Wynn will probe the late-stage evolution of red supergiant stars through observations and modeling of type II supernovae. Using transient sky surveys, he will construct the first volume-limited, spectroscopically-complete sample of type II supernovae discovered within days of explosion in order to constrain the final evolutionary stages of red supergiant stars in the local universe. Additionally, Wynn will utilize ultraviolet spectroscopy/imaging of both young and old core-collapse supernovae to constrain the physics of circumstellar shockwaves and the mass-loss histories of red supergiants in the decades-to-centuries before explosion.

Rafael Luque

Host Institution: The University of Chicago

Proposal Title: Understanding the Origin and Nature of Sub-Neptunes

Born in Priego de Córdoba (Spain), Rafael Luque earned his bachelor’s in physics from the University of Granada (Spain) in 2015 and his master’s in physics in 2017 from the University of Heidelberg (Germany). He earned his doctorate in 2021 thanks to a Doctoral INPhINIT Fellowship from the European Union and “la Caixa” Banking Foundation, having worked with Professor Enric Palle and Dr. Grzegorz Nowak at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (Spain). Currently, Rafael is a "Margarita Salas" Fellow at the University of Chicago, working with Professor Jacob Bean.

Rafael's research aims to understand the origin and nature of sub-Neptunes. This class of planets has no counterpart in the solar system, but they exist in (approximately) every other star in the Galaxy. Several theories and models can explain their existence and demographic properties, but they make opposing predictions about their internal structure, location at birth, evolution history, or atmospheric composition. As a Sagan Fellow, Rafael will exploit the synergies between ground- and space-based observatories to build a sample of sub-Neptunes with precise and accurate measured properties (such as radius, mass, and atmospheric composition) that break the modeling degeneracies inherent to this class and help us infer a unique answer about their properties.

Madeleine McKenzie

Host Institution: Carnegie Observatories

Proposal Title: Uncovering the Unknown Origins of Globular Clusters

Madeleine McKenzie is an Aussie from Perth, Western Australia. She earned her bachelor’s degree in physics and computer science from the University of Western Australia (UWA) in 2018. In 2020, she earned her master’s in astrophysics at UWA and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) working on hydrodynamical simulations of globular cluster formation. For her doctorate, she transitioned from theory to observations to work with Dr. David Yong on the chemical abundance analysis of globular clusters at the Australian National University and is set to graduate at the end of 2024.

Following her passion for these ancient collections of stars, Madeleine has set the lofty goal of redefining what is and is not a globular cluster. With next-generation telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope discovering dense stellar structures in the early universe, understanding the different formation channels of the star clusters and dwarf galaxies in our backyard is becoming more important. As a Hubble Fellow, she will utilize kinematic and chemical element abundance variations, particularly that of iron peak and neutron capture process elements, to characterize the diversity of star clusters around our Milky Way. Using the Magellan Telescopes operated by the Carnegie Observatories, she will undertake an ambitious observing program to identify which balls of stars are masquerading as globular clusters using a combination of high-precision chemical abundances and isotopic analysis. The outcomes from her project will help improve our understanding of fields such as star formation, nucleosynthesis, stellar evolution, and the accreted halo of our Milky Way.

Jed McKinney

Proposal Title: The Role of Dust in Shaping the Evolution of Galaxies

Jed McKinney grew up between Old Greenwich, CT and Brussels, BE. He achieved his bachelor’s degree at Tufts University in 2017, and his doctorate in astronomy from The University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2022. During his studies Jed was an IPAC Visiting Graduate Fellow at Caltech.  He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin.

Jed’s research focuses on understanding the lifecycle of galaxies through the lens of dust. Dust, a by-product of star formation like interstellar pollution, is a small component of galaxies by mass but plays a transformative role in how we observe, interpret, and model them. Jed’s research uses both observations and simulations to directly test and contextualize the nuanced role of dust in galaxy formation. 

As a Hubble Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin, Jed will combine detailed spectroscopic surveys using James Webb Space Telescope and ALMA with large multi-wavelength imaging programs and simulations. Jed will measure directly the properties of dust grains in distant galaxies to uncover the relationship between dust, star- and supermassive black-hole formation out to early times in the history of the universe. This will enable a new and unbiased perspective on the mechanics of galaxy formation, one that is rooted in a comprehensive census of dust.

Keefe Mitman

Host Institution: Cornell University

Proposal Title: Decoding General Relativity with Next-Generation Numerical Relativity Waveforms

Keefe Mitman was raised in Madison, Wisconsin. He earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics from Columbia University in 2019 and his doctorate in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 2024. At Caltech, he studied black holes, gravitational waves, and numerical relativity with Professor Saul Teukolsky and the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) Collaboration.

Keefe’s research largely focuses on utilizing results from the gravitational wave theory community to improve contemporary numerical relativity simulations of binary black hole coalescences. One such example of this was using these simulations to calculate and model an intriguing and not-yet observed prediction of Einstein’s theory of general relativity called the gravitational wave memory effect. This effect corresponds to the permanent net displacement that two observers will experience due to the passage of transient gravitational radiation and is of immense interest to those working on testing general relativity, probing the fundamental structure of spacetime, and understanding the enigmas of quantum gravity.

As an Einstein Fellow at Cornell University, Keefe will continue his work with the SXS Collaboration to build models of the gravitational waves that can be observed by current gravitational wave detectors. In particular, he will focus on constructing waveform models that contain the memory effect to help observe this perplexing phenomenon, as well as others, for the first time.

Sarah Moran

Host Institution: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Proposal Title: From Stars to Storms: Planetary Cloud Seeding with Sulfur-Based Hazes

Sarah Moran grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. She earned her bachelor’s degree with a major in Astrophysics and a minor in Science and Public Policy at Barnard College of Columbia University in New York in 2015. She earned her doctorate in planetary sciences from Johns Hopkins University in 2021, having worked under Sarah Hörst and Nikole Lewis. During her graduate studies, she also served as a Space Policy Fellow with the Space Studies Board at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Sarah is currently the Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory with Mark Marley.

Sarah’s research combines laboratory astrophysics and atmospheric modeling to understand the aerosols that form in substellar atmospheres, from solar system worlds to exoplanets to brown dwarfs. Aerosols act as tracers of the physics and chemistry of these atmospheres, giving insight into the processes that shape the observable spectra of these objects. As a Sagan Fellow, Sarah will experimentally investigate the effect of sulfur species in forming atmospheric hazes and examine whether such particles enhance or inhibit exotic exoplanet cloud formation. These studies will help interpret ongoing and future observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, James Webb Space Telescope, and next-generation observatories.

Andrew Saydjari

Proposal Title: Inferring Kinematic and Chemical Maps of Galactic Dust

Andrew Saydjari grew up in Wisconsin Rapids, WI. He earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and bachelor’s and master’s in chemistry at Yale University in 2018, with a thesis on organometallic catalysis. Andrew then moved to Harvard University as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and will complete his doctorate in physics spring 2024, advised by Douglas Finkbeiner.

Andrew’s work focuses on combining astrophysics, statistics, and high-performance coding to study the chemical, spatial, and kinematic variations in the dust that permeates the Milky Way. Dust is an important building block in matter assembly, and a driver of the interstellar environment and galactic foreground. As a Hubble Fellow at Princeton, Andrew will use new, unbiased measurements of near infrared diffuse interstellar bands to precisely map the kinematics and chemistry of galactic dust. He strives to constrain feedback processes shaping the interstellar medium and improve compositional constraints on dust. He will develop the rigorous statistical machinery necessary to combine spectroscopic surveys with upcoming photometry from SPHEREx and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to answer his motivating questions: “What is dust made of, where is it, and how is it moving?”

Peter Senchyna

Proposal Title: Bridging the Gap: Bringing the First Galaxies into Focus with Local Laboratories

Peter Senchyna grew up in rural Venersborg / Battle Ground, Washington, and earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Washington. He earned his doctorate working with Dan Stark at the University of Arizona in 2020. Since then, Peter has held a Carnegie Fellowship at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena.

Peter's research is focused on understanding the first generations of massive stars and the galaxies for which they laid the foundations. Our understanding of how the universe was reionized and the earliest phases of galaxy assembly are inextricably bound-up with uncertainties in the physics of metal-poor massive stars, including the potentially profound but uncertain role of binary mass transfer. As a Hubble Fellow, Peter will bring new James Webb Space Telescope observations into conversation with several unique datasets in the local universe. These include extraordinarily deep ultraviolet continuum spectroscopy of nearby extremely metal-poor blue compact dwarf galaxies with the Hubble Space Telescope, and a large Magellan narrowband imaging campaign dissecting dwarf irregulars at the edge of the Local Group. Peter aims to unite these observations spanning from our cosmic backyard to redshift ~10 to cast light on both the nature of galaxies at cosmic dawn and massive star evolution under (near-)primordial conditions.

Raphael Skalidis

Proposal Title: Magnetic Fields in the Multiphase Interstellar Medium

Raphael Skalidis grew up in Rethymno, Crete, Greece. He obtained his doctorate from the Department of physics at the University of Crete in 2022, and later moved to the California Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow. His research focuses on the interstellar medium (ISM).

Observatories such as LOFAR and the Planck satellite have revealed that a coherent magnetic field permeates the different phases of the ISM, challenging some common conceptions. As a Hubble Fellow, Raphael aims to develop theories about the role of magnetic fields in shaping the multiphase ISM. He will follow a multifaceted approach that will include comparisons between synthetic data and observations, analytical calculations, and numerical simulations. Raphael’s research promises to advance our knowledge of the magnetized ISM which is critical for understanding galaxy evolution and star formation.

Adam Smercina

Host Institution: Space Telescope Science Institute

Proposal Title: A Portrait of the Triangulum: Advancing a New Frontier of Galaxy Evolution with Resolved Stars

Adam Smercina is a native of Northwest Ohio, growing up in the small town of Oak Harbor near the shore of Lake Erie. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics, with a concentration in astrophysics, from the University of Toledo in 2015. He then moved north to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he ultimately earned his doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics in August 2020, advised by Eric Bell. Adam was supported during his doctorate work by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Since 2020, he has worked with Julianne Dalcanton and Ben Williams at the University of Washington as a postdoctoral scholar.

Adam's research focuses on reconstructing the evolutionary histories of galaxies by resolving them into their constituent stars. We are in an exciting new era where the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope operate simultaneously, providing better access to the resolved stellar populations in individual nearby galaxies than ever before. These galaxies' constituent stars are tremendously information-rich, providing an archaeological record of their host galaxy's evolution. As a Hubble Fellow at STScI, Adam will use these stars to chart the evolution of structure, star formation, and interaction in galaxies throughout the Local Volume, including a targeted study of the Triangulum Galaxy, M33. The first large galaxy with panchromatic Hubble+Webb observations across its disk, M33 is among the most important members of the Local Group, and exists at a mass where the physics driving the evolution of spiral galaxies is poorly understood. This work will establish a foundational blueprint for a new era of studying resolved stellar populations in large galaxies from space, setting the benchmark for future facilities studying more distant, cosmologically-representative populations of galaxies.

Shangjia Zhang

Proposal Title: Probing Young Planet Populations with 3D Self-Consistent Disk Thermodynamics

Shangjia Zhang was born and raised in Beijing, China. He earned bachelor’s degrees in astronomy and physics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2018. He is currently completing his doctorate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, under the guidance of Professor Zhaohuan Zhu.

Shangjia's research interests focus on several aspects of protoplanetary disks, including constraining dust properties and disk thermal structure, and inferring potential young planet populations from disk substructures. As a Sagan Fellow, he will use state-of-the-art radiation hydrodynamic simulations to self-consistently study disk thermodynamics. By deepening our understanding of disk physics, his goal is to provide better explanations for disk images and kinematics obtained from radio interferometers and giant telescopes. By bridging theory with observations, he aims to distinguish substructures’ planetary and non-planetary origins and uncover more young planets.

Host Institution: University of Chicago

Proposal Title: Enabling Radial Velocity Detection of Earth-Twins Through Data-Driven Algorithms and Community Collaboration

Lily Zhao grew up in west Philadelphia. She earned bachelors’ degrees in biology, mathematics, and physics from the University of Chicago in 2016. Lily was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at Yale University, where she earned her doctorate in astronomy in 2021 under the supervision of Professor Debra Fischer. Since 2021, Lily has been a Flatiron Research Fellow at the Center for Computational Astrophysics.

Lily's research advances precision spectroscopy with a focus on dynamical discovery and characterization of lower-mass exoplanets. She is the project scientist for EXPRES, an ultra-stabilized optical spectrograph. Lily also leads the Extreme Stellar Signals Project, a community-wide collaboration with over 40 members working together to mitigate stellar signals, which are now the largest source of scatter in precision radial velocity measurements. As a Sagan Fellow at the University of Chicago, Lily will develop empirical methods for mitigating stellar signals using the full spectral format and continue coordinating community efforts.

Sebastian Zieba

Proposal Title: Characterization of Rocky Exoplanet Surfaces and Atmospheres in the JWST Era

Sebastian Zieba grew up in Salzburg, Austria. He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Innsbruck in 2017. He remained in Innsbruck to pursue his master’s degree, during which he discovered transiting comets orbiting the exoplanet host star Beta Pictoris. After completing his master’s in 2020, he moved to Heidelberg, Germany to pursue a doctorate in astronomy under the supervision of Professor Laura Kreidberg, which he will complete in the summer of 2024.

During Sebastian’s doctorate research at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, he has pushed the boundary of atmospheric characterization down to small, rocky exoplanets. He has used space-based telescopes like the Spitzer Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and James Webb Space Telescope to cover an extensive temperature range, from lava worlds with outgassed rock vapor atmospheres caused by scorching temperatures exceeding 2000 Kelvin to terrestrial planets with temperatures around 400 K, more comparable to our own inner solar system.

As the Principal Investigator (PI) of two accepted Cycle 2 Webb proposals, Sebastian will characterize the surfaces of hot, airless planets, measure their surface roughness, and explore the transition region between rocky and gaseous planets. As a Sagan Fellow, he will analyze these upcoming observations to unravel the geological history of rocky exoplanets and determine the conditions under which these small worlds retain atmospheres.

Contact the NHFP

[email protected] NASA Hubble Fellowship Program