News at MPA

The IAU has announced the winners of its annual PhD prizes, including MPA postdoc Claude Cournoyer-Cloutier, who was recognised for her thesis on the 'Dynamics and Feedback of Massive Binaries in Young Massive Star Clusters'.
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Today, the European Research Council (ERC) announced that two researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics will receive an Advanced Grant to pursue ambitious projects. MPA director Eiichiro Komatsu will investigate New Physics from the Polarized Light of the Cosmic Microwave Background (NewPhysCMB), while Sherry Suyu, who is also a professor at the Technical University Munich, will be constraining the Hubble constant, Supernova Ia progenitors, and emissions of tidally disrupted stars near black holes (LENS-ON-FIRE). In total, 319 leading researchers across Europe were selected to receive funding worth €838 million in the framework of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme. more

Eight Max Planck Society scientists have been awarded Advanced Grants from the European Research Council (ERC) in its latest funding cycle, each receiving up to €2.5 million for a period of five years to conduct their research projects. more

Today, the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) - which recently completed the largest survey ever taken of the early universe – has released all of its immense, information-rich database to the public. Built from more than half a petabyte of raw and processed data, it will allow astronomers to study how the first galaxies formed and evolved, measure how gas and stars were distributed within these galaxies, map the large-scale structure of the cosmos, and investigate rare and unexpected objects not easily found in traditional surveys. more

The Finnish Astronomical Society has honoured the new MPA postdoc Alexander Rawlings with the prestigious Väisälä Prize for the best PhD thesis in astronomy completed in Finland between 2024 and 2025. more

The future MPA postdoc Ignas Juodžbalis has been named a recipient of the 2026 Gruber Foundation Fellowship in Astrophysics. The award, administered by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), recognizes exceptional early-career researchers and provides a $75,000 USD research grant to support groundbreaking work.
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This year, the Astronomical Society of Japan (ASJ) awarded the ‘Young Astronomer Award’ to MPA postdoc Sunmyon Chon for his work on “Theoretical Studies on the Evolution of the Initial Mass Function of Low-metallicity Stars in the Early Universe”. The ASJ highlighted “his significant contributions to theoretical astrophysics, particularly regarding star formation in the early universe, a topic he has advanced through simulations using the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan's supercomputer ATERUI II.” more