Astronomer Stella Offner Receives Delta Young Astronomer Lectureship Award

Astronomer Stella Offner of The University of Texas at Austin has been awarded the NCU-Delta Young Astronomer Lectureship Award by Taiwan's National Central University and the Delta Electronics Foundation.

Each year, the award is given to one or two international scholars under the age of 45. It includes an invitation to deliver a series of prize lectures in Taiwan and a trophy. Representatives from Delta Electronics presented the award to Offner in Austin yesterday.

"I'm really honored to receive this lectureship award," Offner said, "and I'm excited to have this opportunity to share my work on star formation with NCU and the public."

An associate professor of astronomy, Offner studies star formation with a focus on the evolution of the gas and dust clouds where stars are born, as well as how these stars form planets. She uses high-performance computing and machine learning to aid her research.

Offner will deliver her two lectures remotely later this week. Her public lecture is entitled "Stellar Siblings: How Multiple Star Systems Form." She will also present a lecture to fellow researchers entitled "Harnessing Machine Learning to Study Star Formation."

The Delta Young Astronomer Lectureship Award was created by Bruce Cheng, founder of Delta Electronics. It aims to recognize the academic achievement of one or two outstanding young astronomers each year from around the world and bring them to Taiwan to interact with the community and inspire young minds there.