Jo Bovy and Christopher Honey are among 126 outstanding young researchers from across Canada and the United States tapped for success today with research fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Both U of T recipients are from the Faculty of Arts & Science.
Bovy, an astrophysicist, conducts investigations into the structure, formation and evolution of the Milky Way. Among his many achievements, he was instrumental in making the first-ever detailed measurements of the chemical structure of the Milky Way’s disk – the relatively flat arrangement of spiral arms, spurs and other collections of gas, dust and stars beyond the glowing bulge of our galaxy’s centre.
“My dream discovery would be to determine how dark matter is distributed on very small scales,” Bovy said. “If [that matter] is cold, there should be all these tiny blobs floating around in the Milky Way. You wouldn’t be able to see them, but I’d love to figure out if it exists that way.”
Honey is a neuroscientist who studies how the brain integrates information in real-time, using memories it has previously stored while streaming current data. He’s looked at how the brain processes movie clips and now he’s turning his attention to comics and picture books.
“I’ve been reading a lot of graphic novels lately,” Honey said. “I’m especially interested in wordless graphic novels and how we naturally make sense of each panel in relation to the panels that came before.