Jason Dexter, JILA Fellow.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced on February 12 that JILA Fellow Jason Dexter has won a 2020 Sloan Fellowship.
Dexter joined JILA in 2019. Dexter’s work revolves around black holes, specifically how gas falls into black holes and their use as probes of strong gravity. He is a core member of the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, which captured the first image of a black hole last year.
“I’m honored to receive this prestigious award," Dexter said. "Images and movies of gas falling into black holes hold tremendous promise for learning how they grow and for understanding their nature. The Sloan Fellowship will support our group’s work in maximizing the science return on these breakthrough observations using state of the art computational models."
The Sloan Fellowships recognize 126 early career researchers who have the potential to revolutionize their fields. These two-year fellowships are granted across the sciences, including chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences, and physics. Each 2020 fellow receives $75,000 for his or her fellowship.
The Physics Frontiers Centers (PFC) program supports university-based centers and institutes where the collective efforts of a larger group of individuals can enable transformational advances in the most promising research areas. The program is designed to foster major breakthroughs at the intellectual frontiers of physics by providing needed resources such as combinations of talents, skills, disciplines, and/or specialized infrastructure, not usually available to individual investigators or small groups, in an environment in which the collective efforts of the larger group can be shown to be seminal to promoting significant progress in the science and the education of students. PFCs also include creative, substantive activities aimed at enhancing education, broadening participation of traditionally underrepresented groups, and outreach to the scientific community and general public.