LSA senior Anna Simpson is a recipient of the 2022 Astronaut Scholarship! The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation was created to ensure that the United States would maintain its leadership in the STEM world by supporting top college students in these fields.

The Astronaut Scholarship awards up to $15,000 to the winning student, along with an expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C. for the Innovators Gala and an opportunity to present their research. Winners also get membership to the Astronaut Scholar Honor society where they can receive mentoring from other scholars, research industry professionals, and even NASA astronauts.

Anna is majoring in Physics and Honors Astronomy and Astrophysics, with a minor in math. She was also one of five U-M recipients of the Goldwater Scholarship earlier this year. Simpson has been working with Professor David Gerdes on research related to Trans-Neptunian objects since 2019. She plans to pursue a PhD in astronomy and planetary science with a research focus on the Solar System or exoplanets.

Previously, Anna has participated in the WAVE Fellows program at Caltech studying Jupiter Trojans and an REU at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics where she worked on a project about transiting exoplanets.

She notes that, “the application process was a great opportunity to think about my research career journey so far and share the results of my research work.”

To read more about her achievements in the field of Astrophysics, read this article from the Michigan Daily.