Prize Recipient

Amy Barger
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Citation:

"For her pioneering efforts in using observational cosmology to provide new insight into the evolution of black holes, star formation rates and galaxies."

Background:

Amy Barger received her B.A. in Physics in 1993 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her Ph.D. in Astronomy in 1997 from King's College and the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, where she was a Marshall Scholar. In 1996, she became a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. She continued her research there after being named both a Hubble Fellow and a Chandra Fellow at Large in 1999. Barger returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2000 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Astronomy and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2004. She also holds an appointment as Affiliate Graduate Faculty in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Hawaii.

Barger's primary research interest is mapping the star formation and accretion histories of the universe using observations at many wavelengths. She has made discoveries of new populations of dusty galaxies and supermassive black holes in the distant universe.

Among the honors Barger has received are the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, and the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy. She was also a recipient of the Phillip R. Certain Dean's Distinguished Teaching Award and the H. I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship for distinguished research, both at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Selection Committee:

Anna C. Balazs (Chair), Aihua Xie (12/06), Hui Cao ('06 Recipient)(12/06), Marc Sher (V. Chair)(12/07), Jolie Cizewski (12/07)