Cannon Award for Annette Ferguson
June 2003

Annette Ferguson (Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik) received the 2003 Annie Jump
Cannon Award in Astronomy.

Established by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in 1934, the award honors a
woman postdoctoral scholar for significant research in astronomy. It's administration
was transferred in 1974 to the Foundation, which now oversees the award in
cooperation with AAS. The award carries a stipend of 5.000 USD.

Following undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto, Ferguson received
her PhD in Astrophysik from the Johns Hopkins University in 1997. Her thesis advisor
was Rosemary Wyse. She has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute of Astronomy,
Cambridge and the Kapteyn Institute, Groningen and is currently a Marie Curie Fellow
at the Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik in Garching, Germany. Her research focuses
on observational studies of large-scale star formation and resolved stellar
populations in nearby galaxies and their implications for understanding galaxy
formation and evolution.

Ferguson will use the Cannon Award to continue her studies of the fossil stellar
populations in M31 and M33. This research exploits wide-field ground-based
observations from the Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma as well as high-resolution
imagery from the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope.
Specific goals are to place constraints on the star formation history of galactic
disks and the role that satellite accretion has played in the galaxy assembly process.

The AAS Advisory Committee for the award includes Karen Kwitter (Williams College,
Williamstown, MA), Joan Najita (National Optical Astronomy Observatory, AZ), and
Kim Venn (Macalester College, St. Paul).

http://www.aas.org/grants/awards.html#cannon