Northwestern University astrophysicist Adam Miller has been awarded the 2025 Cottrell Scholar Award by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA). This award recognizes early career scholars in chemistry, physics, and astronomy. Each of the 16 recipients will receive $120,000.
The awardees will be honored at the Cottrell Scholar Conference from July 16-18 in Tucson, Arizona. RCSA president and CEO Daniel Linzer stated, “These distinguished awardees join a multidisciplinary, multigenerational force of more than 500 Cottrell Scholars from colleges and universities across the United States and Canada.” He added that these scholars are innovators in science and teaching both at their institutions and on a national level.
Miller serves as an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. He is also affiliated with Northwestern’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astronomy (CIERA). His proposal titled “Simultaneously early and late: Leveraging LS4 and LSST to understand the physics of white dwarf supernovae” earned him this recognition.
With this award, Miller plans to utilize data from two time-domain surveys: the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) and the La Silla Schmidt Southern Survey (LS4). These observations aim to enhance understanding of Type Ia supernovae caused by unstable white dwarf stars in binary systems undergoing runaway nuclear fusion.
In addition to his research, Miller intends to develop an educational program for incoming Ph.D. students in physics and astronomy at Northwestern. This program aims to provide training in scientific computing while connecting students with potential mentors within the university.