News - Trottier Space Institute at McGill

Siva Reddy and Katelin Schutz win 2026 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowships

Feb 17, 2026, McGill Reporter

Professor Katelin Schutz (Physics), along with Professor Siva Reddy (Computer Science and Linguistics) has been named a 2026 Sloan Research Fellows. A member of McGill’s Trottier Space Institute, Schutz studies some of the largest structures in the universe in order to better understand the smallest building blocks of matter.

Dr. Bridget Andersen awarded the Dr. Allie Vibert Douglas Astrophysics PhD Thesis Prize

Jan 28, 2026, McGill Faculty of Science

Congratulations to Dr. Bridget Andersen, who has received the Dr. Allie Vibert Douglas Astrophysics PhD Thesis Prize! The prize is awarded annually, upon the recommendation of the Department of Physics, to one PhD student who presents the best thesis in astrophysics. Andersen, who’s now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, studies radio transients like fast radio bursts (FRBs) and pulsars. During her time at McGill, she joined the CHIME/FRB Collaboration as a foundational member.

Applications for the 2026 TSI Summer Undergraduate awards are now open

Jan 22, 2026, TSI at McGill

TSI Summer Undergraduate Research Awards are a unique opportunity for undergraduate students to join TSI’s interdisciplinary, vibrant community of over 100 researchers, while engaging in cutting-edge research in astrophysics, planetary science, atmospheric science, or astrobiology. Undergraduate summer researchers will also be able to participate in our TSI Undergraduate Summer Program, a weekly seminar and workshops series culminating in a research showcase. Deadline: February 27, 2026.

First early-career astronomers selected as Canadian SKA Scientists

Jun 2, 2025, Government of Canada

PhD candidate Alice Curtin and Dr. Fengqiu (Adam) Dong are the inaugural cohort of the NRC's innovative new program The SKA project is a global effort to deliver one of the most ambitious scientific facilities on the planet. The project is building the 2 largest radio telescope arrays in the world, which will become the SKA Observatory (SKAO). The National Research Council of Canada (NRC) represents Canada in the project.

Six striking images showcase scientific fieldwork

May 13, 2025, Nature

This image of the vast South Pole Telescope (SPT), situated at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole station, was taken six months into Aman Chokshi’s 14-month stay at the US-run Antarctic research station.

Volcanic Eruption in Deep Ocean Ridge Is Witnessed by Scientists for First Time

May 2, 2025, The New York Times

Researchers diving in a submersible in the eastern Pacific realized that the landscape they had studied the day before had been glassed over by fresh lava.

McGill outreach initiative introduces astronomy to girls in grades 5 and 6

Apr 29, 2025, McGill Reporter

Every Wednesday last fall, a group of girls in grades 5 and 6 at Coronation Elementary School in Montreal spent their lunchtimes learning about outer space. They were participating in a 10-week introduction to astronomy and telescopes run by members of the Trottier Space Institute and the McGill Physics Department. Called Science in Space: How to Telescope and supported through Dell Technologies’s Girls Who Game program, the initiative aims to encourage girls and gender-nonconforming students to see themselves as scientists and engineers.

Dead galaxies, live signals: Astronomers uncover a fast radio burst’s surprising location

Jan 21, 2025, McGill Reporter

McGill astronomers place FRB 20240209A in a region of space associated with a ‘dead’ galaxy, one that is no longer forming stars

Researchers link mysterious cosmic signals to collapsed stars

Jan 2, 2025, McGill Reporter

An international team of scientists led by McGill University researchers has provided the clearest evidence yet that some fast radio bursts (FRBs) — enigmatic, millisecond-long flashes of radio waves from space — originate from neutron stars, the ultra-dense remnants of massive stars that have exploded in a supernova. This finding, based on an analysis of the radio signal of a single FRB, advances our understanding of one of the universe’s most perplexing phenomena.

News McGill researchers help uncover rare gamma-ray flare from a distant black hole

Dec 13, 2024, McGill Reporter

A high-energy gamma-ray flare from the super-massive black hole in the Messier 87 (M87) galaxy was observed in 2018 for the first time in nearly a decade, thanks to an international effort involving McGill University researchers. This discovery has yielded important insights into the physics of black hole jets, which are among the most efficient engines for distributing energy from the inside of a galaxy to the expanse of the Universe.