Award honors the nation’s most innovative early-career scientists
Northwestern University astrophysicist Allison Strom has received a 2024 Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The prestigious fellowship includes an unrestricted grant of $875,000 over five years to pursue innovative and experimental research.
The foundation named Strom and 19 other junior faculty members as the nation’s most innovative early-career scientists and engineers.
“The Packard Fellowship affords me and my group the opportunity to explore new directions by combining different expertise from across astronomy and astrophysics,” Strom said. “As a Packard Fellow, I am excited to study the role massive stars in early universe play in shaping the evolution of galaxies — and how we can use these galaxies as laboratories to study stellar astrophysics.”
Strom is an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and member of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and the NSF-Simons AI Institute for the Sky (SkAI).
“This extraordinary class of Fellows joins the community of Packard Fellows who are pushing the boundaries of innovation and discovery to contribute to science and engineering in ways that make a real difference to our world,” said Richard Alley, chair of the Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering Advisory Panel and 1991 Packard Fellow. “We look forward to welcoming them to the Packard Fellows community and supporting them as they collaborate, learn and create the future together.”
There are billions of galaxies in the universe, each with its own unique combination of traits. Using the largest telescopes in the world, Strom’s research group observes galaxies throughout cosmic history to determine their internal properties and growth histories. Her goal is to understand why galaxies follow different evolutionary paths.
Continue to the full Northwestern news article.