Taft Wins Chambliss Student Award for Astrophysics Research

Sarah Taft, a Ph.D. student at the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics, has been honored with the Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Award for her outstanding poster presentation at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in National Harbor, Maryland, this past January. The award recognizes exceptional research conducted by undergraduate and graduate students who present at AAS conferences.

Taft’s award-winning poster, titled "Simulating Chemical Abundances in the Circumstellar Nebula of the Late-Stage Binary RY Scuti," showcases her innovative approach to modeling the nebular environment of the RY Scuti binary system. Using infrared spectroscopy and advanced photoionization modeling, Taft successfully simulated the chemical composition of the system’s surrounding nebula, constraining key elemental abundances—including helium, neon, sulfur, and iron.

Her research was conducted under the mentorship of Professors Bob Gehrz and Chick Woodward, in collaboration with Dr. Annalisa Citro, a postdoctoral fellow at the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics.