Oegerle Award Announcement

Photos: Monique Kubovsky and David Fulcher

Two undergraduate students have been awarded the 2025–2026 William Oegerle Scholarship in Physics and Astronomy: David Fulcher will work with Dr. Elizabeth Lada in Astronomy, and Monique Kubovsky will work with Dr. Amlan Biswas in Physics.

David’s project with Dr. Lada is titled Investigating the Initial Mass Functions of Orion B’s Young Embedded Star Clusters. The project focuses on investigating the distribution of stellar masses at birth in four nearby embedded star clusters within Orion B.  Monique’s project with Dr. Biswas is titled Ferromagnetic Domain Movement in Hole-doped Manganites at Low Current Densities. Monique will grow thin films and heterostructures of manganite materials and use dielectrophoresis to control their ferromagnetic domains, with applications to solid state memory devices.

The William Oegerle Scholarship provides support for undergraduate students who show exceptional promise in conducting research. The awardee carries out a research project under the guidance of a faculty member in the Department of Physics or Astronomy.  The scholarship was created by UF alumnus Dr. William Oegerle, who graduated from UF in 1972 with a Bachelor of Science in Physics and received his Ph.D. in 1977 from the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Oegerle was a Director with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He worked on the Hubble Space Telescope and in 2016 was awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the top honor NASA can bestow on a civilian.

Congratulations to David and Monique on this well deserved honor!