The astronomy department is proud to announce its Spring 2026 Academic Awards. The winners were recognized in an online ceremony on April 30, 2026. The ceremony was led by Department Chair Tony Wong and Director of Undergraduate Studies Professor Bryan Dunne and featured remarks from longtime donors, the winning students, and the students' advisors.
The following individuals were recognized with the following awards:
Lewis E. Snyder Memorial Travel Award
The Lewis E. Snyder Graduate Student Travel Award provides graduate students with the opportunity to present their work at conferences, highlighting their astronomical research at Illinois and providing exposure to the wider research community.
Grant Merz - Fall 2025
Grant Merz is a fifth-year graduate student in Astronomy, working with Professor Xin Liu. He attended the 247th AAS Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, in January 2026. He presented his thesis work on "Detection, Instance Segmentation and Classification with Deep Learning (DeepDISC): An AI framework to improve pixel-to-object pipelines."
Zachary Stone - Fall 2025
Zachary Stone is a fifth-year graduate student in Astronomy, working with Professor Yue Shen. He attended the 247th AAS Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona in January 2026. He presented his thesis on "Probing Small-Scale AGN Dynamics with Reverberation Mapping using SDSS-V and JWST."
Maggie Verrico - Spring 2026
Maggie Verrico is a fourth-year student in Astronomy, working with Professor Decker French. This summer, she will attend the conference “Tidal Disruption Events and Nuclear Transients in Crete Volume 2,” where she will give a talk on “Identifying Changing-Look AGN Transitions in Light Curve Data with the Zwicky Transient Facility.”
Mr. and Mrs. Hsiang-pai and Wen-hua Chu Department Of Astronomy Excellence in Research Graduate Student Award
This graduate student award, honoring the parents of Professor Emerita You-Hua Chu, has been established to encourage young scientists to achieve excellence in research.
Maggie Verrico
Maggie Verrico is a fourth-year astronomy PhD student studying supermassive black hole accretion systems and their impacts on star formation in massive galaxies.
Her advisor is Professor Decker French. She uses extremely variable “changing-look” AGN to test theories of black hole accretion physics and AGN feedback.
David Vizgan
David Vizgan is a fourth-year graduate student.
His advisor is Professor Joaquin Vieira. His research uses gravitational lensing to study galaxy properties at high resolution and to address the challenges and opportunities provided by increasingly large lensing surveys.
Stanley Wyatt Memorial Award
The Stanley Wyatt Memorial Award is given to a graduating Astronomy major or minor, based on outstanding GPA and track record of research.
Suvinay Goyal
Suvinay Goyal is a graduating senior with a dual major in astrophysics and astronomy + data science and a minor in mathematics.
He has worked with Professor Jeffrey Filippini in the Observational Cosmology and Fundamental Physics Lab on instrumentation and analysis for experimental cosmology.
Other awards
The department also recognized graduate students for receiving the following awards outside the department.
Jocelyn Bell-Burnell and ICASU Travel Award
- Nicolas Conroy
- Margaret Shepherd
Graduate College Conference Presentation Awards
- Aadya Agrawal
- Spencer Wilken
- Yujie Wan
Additionally, professors Leslie Looney and Bryan Dunne received Campus Awards for Excellence in Instruction this spring.
Congratulations to all!