Newswise — NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) have announced the selection of 17 new Hubble Fellows. STScI in Baltimore, Md., administers the Hubble Fellowship Program for NASA.

The Hubble Fellowship Program now includes all research relevant to present and future missions in NASA's Cosmic Origins theme. These missions currently include the Herschel Space Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), and the Spitzer Space Telescope.

"I am proud of the work done by the selection committee for the 2013 Hubble Fellowships. We once again have a list of the most exciting research projects to be carried out at U.S. institutions by some of the best and brightest young PhDs from all over the world," said Ron Allen, head of the Hubble Fellowship Program at STScI.

More than 310 of the most prominent and active scientists in this field have been supported at a crucial phase in their careers by this program, and the Hubble Fellowship Program continues to be one of the highlights of NASA's pursuit of excellence in space science.

Each year, the current Hubble Fellows convene for a three-day symposium to present the results of their recent research and to meet face-to-face with other Hubble Fellows and with the scientific and administrative staff who manage the program. The 2013 Symposium was held at STScI on March 4-6.

"The Hubble Fellowship has become one of the most prestigious postdoctoral fellowships in the world. Many faculty search committees begin their work by browsing the current list of Hubble Fellows and streaming the video of the Hubble Fellows Symposia from the STScI video archives. Evidence from the recent past shows that these young researchers are on their way to becoming the future leaders in space science," said Matt Mountain, STScI director.

"I am very impressed with these young people. The new Fellows show an enviable level of scientific maturity. They're already accomplished researchers, and I expect great things from them in the coming years," said STScI deputy director Kathryn Flanagan.

The new Hubble Fellows will begin their programs in the fall of 2013 and are listed below in alphabetical order with their PhD and host institutions:

Rachel Bezanson, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (2013), University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

Francesca DeMeo, Observatoire de Paris, Paris, France (2010), Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Ruobing Dong, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (2013), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California

Jacqueline Faherty, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York (2010), Carnegie Institution of Washington, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Washington, D.C.

Renyu Hu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2013), Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

Andreas Kuepper, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany (2011), Columbia University, New York, New York

Emily Levesque, University of Hawaii, Mauna Kea, Hawaii (2010), University of Colorado, Boulder, Boulder, Colorado

Adam Miller, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California (2013), Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

Philip Muirhead, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (2011), Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts

Ondrej Pejcha, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio (2013), Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

Joseph Richards, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (2010), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California

Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay, University of Montreal, Quebec, Canada (2011), Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

Jonathan Trump, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona (2010), Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania

Daniel Weisz, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2010), University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California

Jessica Werk, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, Michigan (2010), University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California

Zhaohuan Zhu, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, Michigan (2011), Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

Adi Zitrin, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel (2012), California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California

For more information about the Hubble Fellowship program, please visit:http://hubblesite.org/news/2013/16

http://www.stsci.edu/institute/smo/fellowships/hubble/

A complete list of Hubble Fellows since 1990 is available at:http://www.stsci.edu/institute/smo/fellowships/hubble/fellows-list/

For more information about NASA's Astrophysics Division, please visit:http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics

STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA) in Washington, D.C. STScI conducts science operations for the Hubble Space Telescope and is the science and mission operations center for the James Webb Space Telescope.