Hiranya has been awarded the 2012 Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) Fowler Prize for Early Achievement in Astronomy, thus maintaining a fine UCL tradition (previous recipients from the UCL Astrophysics Group include Serena Viti, Sarah Bridle and Barbara Ercolano – Girl Power!).
Credit: Mike Peel
The citation reads:
Dr Hiranya Peiris of University College London receives the Fowler Award in recognition of her particularly noteworthy contribution to astronomy at an early stage of her research career.
Dr Peiris is one of the best of her generation working on the cosmology of the early universe. She has made very significant contributions to the WMAP Cosmic Microwave Background project, particularly concerning constraints on the inflationary models that describe the rapid expansion of the cosmos shortly after the Big Bang. In addition her contributions to astrophysics more broadly include the analysis of large scale structure data, the development of statistical methods and the field of Galactic structure.
She has been awarded many competitive post-doctoral fellowships (Fermi, Hubble, STFC Advanced Fellowship), became a Philip Leverhulme prize-winner in 2009 and has now been appointed to the Faculty of University College London. With her wide ranging interests and accomplishments across a broad range of cosmology and astrophysics, Dr Peiris is awarded the RAS Fowler Award.
To read the full list of recipients and their citations, see the RAS website.
