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Congratulations to Prof. Decker French! She was awarded a Center for Advanced Study Fellowship. For this fellowship, she will be studying tidal disruption events as supermassive black hole laboratories. Stars passing close enough to a supermassive black hole will experience strong tidal forces, which can be enough to destroy the star. As the debris from the tidally-disrupted star falls onto the black hole, it will drive a short-lived flare of light. This can be used to probe the supermassive black hole properties.