Karlis Kaufmanis Scholarship in Astronomy

Supports promising students majoring in Astronomy. Named in honor of Professor Karlis Kaufmanis, who joined the University as a visiting lecturer in 1961 and became an associate professor in 1963. He held the rank of full professor from 1970 until his retirement in 1978.

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Astronomy Picture of the Day

2026 Kaufmanis Scholarship Recipients

Wylie Ricklefs: "I'm originally from Burlington, Vermont. I'm currently focused on gravitational waves and what they can tell us about our universe."

Joshua Missling: " I'm from Blaine, MN. I'm in Astrophysics, and still working on figuring out what I want to do within astrophysics."

Abdulloh Abduqahhorov: Originally from Uzbekistan."Honestly, I want to learn more about stellar evolution."
 

2025 Kaufmanis Scholarship Recipients

Maxwell Leach: "My current research involves computational methods, such as event reconstruction, in the SuperCDMS experiment at SNOLAB."

Zachary Ray: "I am most interested in stellar evolution, galactic evolution, dark matter, and black holes."

three men, two accepting an award the middle posing

2024 Kaufmanis Scholarship Recipients

Anika Bloomquist: "I am interested in black holes, neutron stars, and galaxy mergers."

Hayden Da Silva

Emma de Bruin: "My research is focused on optimizing gravitational wave search pipelines."

Maxwell Leach: "I have not begun my research yet, but plan on working in computational astrophysics."

Sudhava Mohan: "In terms of research area, I am focusing on infrared observational astronomy at the moment but am also interested in pursuing research about black holes in the future (theoretical or observational). "

Zicheng Zang: "I am originally from Hebei China, and my area of research interest is gravitational lensing."

Group

2023 Kaufmans Scholarship in Astronomy

Hayden Da Silva

Joshua Godar ​​
Joshua is originally from Madison Wisconsin, and his area of research interest is in dark matter and gravitational waves. 

 

 

 
Hayden Da Silva and Joshua Godar, Kaufmanis Scholarship recipients

2022 Kaufmans Scholarship in Astronomy

Alyssa Burton
Alyssa is originally from Lake Linden, Michigan in the Upper Peninsula.  "I plan to use my scholarship for tuition next fall to help lower my out-of-state tuition cost.  I have not begun research at the University of Minnesota yet but hope to become involved soon.  One area I am interested in researching is planetary geoscience.  At this time, I am majoring in Astrophysics and considering adding an Earth Science major.  Planetary geoscience would combine these two interests of mine.  Another research area of interest would be to study the aurorae of Earth and other planets in the solar system. Although I have not yet researched at the University of Minnesota, I have assisted with research performed at Michigan Technological University.  During the summers of 2019 and 2021, I worked at Michigan Technological University as an undergraduate research assistant in the College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science.  I was a lab and field assistant in the Forest Ecology Lab.  I also assisted a graduate student with his assessment of soil carbon fractions."

Noelle Feist
Noelle is originally from Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

 

Kate Hildebrandt
Kate is originally from Maple Grove, Minnesota. "This scholarship will help me focus on my studies in my last year of undergrad. I work on the detector team in the SmallSat research lab with Prof. Lindsay Glesener."

 
2022 Kaufmanis Scholarship: Alyssa Burton, Noel Fiest, Kate Hildebrandt

2021 Kaufmans Scholarship in Astronomy

Alina Kaliszewski:

Alina is from Rochester, Minnesota. "This scholarship will help ease the financial stress of college, allowing me to focus more fully on academics. This will make it significantly easier for me to finish my bachelor’s degree and go on to graduate school to start working on my PhD, without having to take time off to work." Alina is most interested in the field of cosmology, particularly research on dark matter and the expansion of the universe. 

 

Cole Panzer:

Cole is from Waupun, Wisconsin. He plans to use the scholarship to pay for college education expenses (tuition, books, fees, etc.) "I have yet to jump into much research. However, I will be joining a research group with Professor Michael Coughlin and his team at LIGO to help with data analysis and programming. Outside of that, I am also a part of the Small Satelite Research Laboratory at UMN on the Detector team. There, I've been helping with the calibration of the detectors that will be used on a CubeSat in the project IMPRESS. As an astrophysics and physics major, I am interested in almost anything space-related; from the search for extraterrestrial life to black holes to gravitational waves. I hope to do research in subjects like these that I have been fascinated by since I was young!"

 
Kaufmanis Scholarship