"We are the Universe, so we should get to know it better.”

Congratulations to AIP member Dr Sara Webb of Swinburne University of Technology for winning the 2024 David Allen Prize for exceptional achievement in astronomy communication.

Sara is not only chasing gravitational wave counterparts, hunting for fast radio burst progenitors, cataloguing the fastest flare stars in the galaxy and building AI tools to help astronomers work faster. She has also built an impressive outreach presence across multiple forms of media, with over 17 million social media views, and a reach of tens of millions annually through traditional media.

Making bright young radio galaxies:

Congratulations to AIP student associate Sophie Young of University of Tasmania for winning the Bok Prize 2024 for outstanding research by an honours student or eligible masters student.

The distant universe is packed with radio galaxies emitting intense bursts of light from supermassive black hole jets. Most of them are young, small, and difficult to study. Sophie created a theoretical sample of these radio galaxies that can now be used to help study them in real life. She showed how they influence their neighbourhood by injecting energy and momentum into the gas clouds between stars.

Read more about all six winners of the Astronomical Society of Australia’s awards here.