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A local Ph.D. student has been chosen—from 141 applicants—for a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship in Astrophysics Research, officials announced Friday.
Chi Nguyen, a graduate student at Rochester Institute of Technology, studies how galaxies formed in the early universe as a student of the school’s astrophysical sciences and technology program.
Nguyen and Michael Zemcov—assistant professor in RIT’s School of Physics and Astronomy—are members of RIT’s Center for Detectors and the Future Photon Initiative.
Nguyen spent the summer at Caltech working on the Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRiment 2. Zemcov is a co-PI of the Caltech-led CIBER-2 project, officials said.
“I am designing various sub-systems like the light baffles which will prevent light from the surrounding environments from getting into the telescope during flight, and a star tracker that will tell us where the telescope is pointing on the sky,” Nguyen said in a statement. “I am also assembling the parts we already fabricated into the rocket skin and characterizing their performances.”
Nguyen receives a $45,000 fellowship which includes a student stipend and funding for student and university expenses, according to RIT.
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