Three Physics and Astronomy students - Colin Packard, David Fehr, and Kevin Hall - have been awarded the University of Iowa Graduate College Ballard and Seashore Dissertation Fellowship.

This fellowship program enables Ph.D. students to benefit from a final semester of protected and supported time to focus on completing their scholarly research activities and writing their dissertations. The award is designed to help students make significant progress toward degree completion while preparing them for the next stage of their academic and professional careers.

Packard won the fellowship for the Fall 2025 semester. His research interests center around instrumentation and hardware development, photometry, and observational astronomy. He is currently working with Dr. Philip Kaaret, Dr. Casey DeRoo, and Dr. Jun Wang on both X-ray detection with CMOS sensors and the development and testing of sensor hardware for an air or space-based platform to measure atmospheric pollutants via Earth observing photometry.

Fehr and Hall won the fellowship for the Spring 2026 semester. Fehr is interested in condensed matter theory research and currently works with Dr. Michael Flatté, studying the theory of spin coherence of molecules with nanoscale confinement.

Hall's interests lie in simulating how exoplanets would look within simulated data from future direct imaging missions and determining what characteristics can be extracted from the system. His graduate advisor is Dr. Hai Fu.

We congratulate Colin, David, and Kevin on this well-earned recognition of their commitment and excellence, and look forward to their continued impact in their respective fields!