CIERA Graduate Fellowships support graduate student research and training at the interface of astrophysics with other disciplines, including data-science, computation, engineering, and adjacent scientific disciplines like chemistry and biology. Additionally, fellowship support enhances our K-12 STEM education and outreach by giving our fellows opportunities to use their scientific training to support educators and students in the Chicagoland area.
- Graduate students in the 3rd year or beyond are eligible.
- Fellowships are typically awarded for 1 year
CIERA Graduate Fellowships may include:
- Riedel Family Graduate Fellowship
- CIERA Board of Visitors Graduate Fellowship
Fellows work on a wide variety of projects for their fellowship, in astrophysics and at the interface between astrophysics and other disciplines (such as data-science), and provide support for CIERA’s overall K-12 education and outreach activities. For more information about the broad range of research conducted in CIERA, please visit our Research pages. See our Education & Outreach page for examples of CIERA’s K-12 STEM Education programming and resources that fellows can participate or build upon.
If you are interested in partnering with CIERA and one of our Graduate Fellows, or on a K-12 education project, please contact ciera@northwestern.edu.
Graduate Fellowship Selection Committee
Members: James Schottelkotte, Kari Frank, Allison Strom
CIERA Graduate Fellows
- Dany Atallah (CIERA Board of Visitors Graduate Fellow, 2023-2024)
- Nycole Wenner (CIERA Board of Visitors Graduate Fellow, 2023-2024)
- Miguel Martinez (CIERA Board of Visitors Graduate Fellow, 2022-2023): Ran workshops for Chicagoland physics/astronomy teachers to network and share resources
- Kyle Rocha (Riedel Family Graduate Fellow, 2022-2023): Developed interactive astrophysics labs for under-resourced local high schools to borrow
- Fulya Kiroglu (CIERA Board of Visitors Graduate Fellow, 2021-2022): Development of CIERA’s free-access REACHpy (Learning python via astronomy)
- Chase Kimball (Riedel Family Graduate Fellow, 2021-2022): Pilot of CIERA’s Research Experiences for Teachers program in advance of NSF proposal
- Mike Bueno (CIERA Board of Visitors Graduate Fellow, 2020-2021): Adapted IDEASpy Python tutorials for use by high school students and other beginners
- Newlin Weatherford (Riedel Family Graduate Fellow, 2020-2021): Designed new portal for scientists, students, and teachers to engage with CIERA and utilize our the STEM training resources
