2024-Jan-22: The VERITAS Collaboration is pleased to recognize the recipients of the 2022 "Outstanding Contribution Awards". Each year the collaboration recognizes exceptional work by two individuals - a graduate student (the Simon Swordy Outstanding Contribution Award) and a postdoctoral researcher (the Trevor Weekes Outstanding Contribution Award), to "...formally recognize the significant contributions of more early-career members of the collaboration in the critical service work that enables scientific publications of VERITAS, but do not result in any scientific publications directly".

This year's recipients are:

Matthew Lundy (Simon Swordy Award) - For a wide variety of service tasks, including his extraordinary contribution to observing (nearing ~20 observing weeks since 2018) and as one of the key volunteer VEGAS developers and instrument response producers. In his work on software, Matthew has been diagnosing and debugging many issues including the spectral analysis with ring background model calculations, light curve analysis, instrument response functions, and data formats, all of which are critical in the analysis pipelines which make scientific publications possible.  He has additionally worked to develop a software tool which can be used for cross-checking expected package sensitivities for a range of observational datasets.  In addition to ensuring that his efforts are well documented and communicated clearly to the collaboration as a whole, Matthew has also been actively supporting the early-career members. As part of this work, he organizes tutorial sessions on various topics at the VCM and the weekly early-career zoom meetings.

Serena Loporchio - (Trevor Weekes Award) - For major service tasks within pSCT, including the development of the prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (pSCT) camera. She has coordinated the quality control measurement tests conducted on FBK SiPM tiles developed for pSCT, completing these tasks with several installation and commissioning shifts, both on-site and remotely.  More recently she has been completing detailed characterizations of the new SMART preamplifier ASIC and of the new FEE modules, both of which are key components in the pSCT camera upgrade. Serena’s service contributions to pSCT have been fundamental for the entire SCT collaboration and made the first pSCT publications, including the Crab detection by the pSCT, possible.  Additionally, Serena has been active in outreach, education and transfer of knowledge, engaging in numerous outreach events annually, specifically with several talks aimed at college and high school students on pSCT and CTA more generally.

Congratulations to Matthew and Serena!

Matthew Lundy     Dr. Serena Loporchio