NSF just announced their Graduate Research Fellowship Program award winners and we are pleased to announce Andy Boyle received a fellowship award. This five-year fellowship includes three years of financial support as well as a cost of education allowance. Andy is being recognized for their outstanding research and potential impact on the field.
Andy Boyle works with Andrew Mann in the Young Worlds Lab studying young (<1 Gyr) stars and exoplanets. His project focuses on using stellar rotation to determine the spatial extent and evolution of young clusters and stellar groups in our region of the Galaxy (< 300 pc). As stars age, their rotation period increases, and the relation can be used to assign ages to stars (a technique known as gyrochronology). By combining spatial and kinematic data from ESA’s Gaia mission with rotation periods measured using light curves from NASA’s TESS mission, Andy aims to find the dissolving parts of stellar associations that would be invisible with kinematics alone. This search will provide insight into stellar structure in the local Galaxy, the evolution of stellar groups, and the dynamical processes that fuel their dispersal, as well as provide an expanded sample of stars to search for young and evolving planets.