Samaya Nissanke awarded AAS HEAD 2024 Mid-Career Prize

Virgo researcher Dr. Samaya Nissanke, astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam, received the 2024 Mid-Career Prize of the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society. The Prize is awarded approximately every 18 months for a significant advance or accomplishment (observational or theoretical) in High Energy Astrophysics by an individual astrophysicist within fifteen years of receiving their PhD. The motivation of the prize reads “for the development of novel techniques to extract fundamental physics from astronomical data, paving the way for the era of gravitational-wave multi-messenger astronomy.”

“I am extremely honored and humbled to receive this award and recognition, for which I share with my wonderful collaborators, mentors, and past and present group members, as well as my family and friends,” said Nissanke. “I am incredibly grateful for their support and for the opportunity to work in this fascinating field of gravitational wave multi-messenger astronomy. I am looking forward to future collaborations and work with inspiring individuals, and to contribute to the next endeavours in the field.”

Samaya Nissanke is a member of the Virgo Collaboration, Einstein Telescope collaboration and LISA Consortium, and works with a slew of time-domain telescopes and surveys from the Zwicky Transient Facility, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, the Vera Rubin Observatory’s LSST to LOFAR and the JVLA. Her work spans gravitational wave source modelling, data analysis, and multi-messenger astronomy, where she played a leading role in the remarkable discovery in 2017 of the merger of two neutron stars.