Foundation
Programs

2011 John Mather Nobel Scholars

In August 2011, five summer interns at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Maryland were awarded John Mather Nobel Scholarships by The National Space Grant Foundation, Inc. The funding for the scholarships originated in a generous contribution from the John and Jane Mather Foundation for Science and the Arts which in turn was funded from the award of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics to Dr. Mather.

The award consists in the designation “John Mather Nobel Scholar,” plus a $3000 scientific travel grant over a two year period.

The 2011 John Mather Nobel Scholars are:

  • Robert Albarran, a senior at University of Hawai'i at Hilo, is working on a bachelor’s degree in astronomy and physics. Robert is studying the periodicity of Saturn Kilometric Radio emissions (SKR) and their variation as a function of time. The auroral radio emissions of most planets have a periodicity that is locked to the rotation of the planetary magnetic field. For reasons that are not yet understood, the SKR periodicity varies slowly by up to 2 percent. We are studying SKR using data from two spacecraft Cassini and Ulysses to provide a stereo perspective.
  • Alexandra Anderson-Frey, a graduate student at McGill University in atmospheric science. Alexandra is creating simulated datasets for a proposed hyperspectral earth-viewing satellite, the Hyperspectral-InfraRed Imager (HyspIRI).
  • Ryan Hannahoe, a senior at Montana State University, is working on his bachelor’s in elementary education. Ryan is working with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on education of public outreach directing hands-on learning experiences on the topic areas of general astronomy, light and optics, and JWST.
  • Aisha Mahmoud-Perez, a senior at the University of Arkansas, is working on her bachelor’s in physics. Aisha is analyzing data of X-ray binaries that were taken with gamma- and X-ray detectors on-board the International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory satellite.
  • Frederick Moxley III, a graduate student in Louisiana Tech University’s PhD program in engineering. Fredrick is supporting the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) probe by running codes for exospheres of Mercury and the moon, obtain available solar wind data and correlate exosphere data with solar wind data.