Three SIRTF Fellows have accepted inaugural three-year appointments, starting with the 2002-2003 academic year. These Fellowship awards were made following a peer review of 57 applications.
Dr. Pieter van Dokkum will remain at the California Institute of Technology to carry out research on "Evolved High-Redshift Galaxies." A 1999 Ph.D. graduate of the University of Groningen, he worked with Professor M. Franx on the formation and evolution of early-type galaxies. Winner of a Hubble Fellowship in 1999, Dr. van Dokkum will study the formation and evolution of objects at very high redshifts, with the goals of determining the formation epoch of massive galaxies and constraining the evolution of the galaxy mass function over cosmic time. The research results will then be compared directly with various galaxy formation models.
Dr. Yanga Fernandez completed his Ph.D. research at the University of Maryland in 1999, under the tutelage of Professor Michael F. A'Hearn. He will remain at the University of Hawaii and carry out a research investigation into the "The Physical Evolution and Dust Activity of Comets," in an effort to study comets in all stages of life: pre-active, active, and extinct. This research will include new observations obtained by SIRTF. The first phase of the research will compare the albedo distributions of outer Solar System Centaurs and comets. This will provide a larger sample to further test an earlier finding that showed a great diversity of albedos among Centaurs, but not among comets. The second phase will obtain spectra of the dust emitted by the comet C/2001 Q4 at various heliocentric distances in order to follow its evolution through one orbit. A third goal is to exploit SIRTF's unique orbit to perform stereo photometry of nearby comets and extinct comet candidates to measure their thermal properties.
Francisca Kemper will earn her Ph.D. in 2002 from the University of Amsterdam, under the direction of Professor L.B.F.M. Waters. She will study "The Composition and Evolution of Dust in Astrophysical Environments" at UCLA. Her investigation will use infrared spectroscopy, laboratory measurements, and full radiative transfer models. The research will focus on the formation and processing of silicates, which are amorphous in the interstellar medium, but show a high degree of crystallinity in circumstellar environments. This work will search for additional dust species, such as carbonates, hydrous silicates, and iron sulfides, in our Galaxy and in external galaxies.