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Newswise The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has named University of Virginia astronomer Shane Davis as a Sloan Research Fellow for 2015. Davis, an assistant professor of astronomy, is a theoretical astrophysicist who is an expert on using large computer simulations to model complex systems in the universe.

He is a major user of U.Va.s new Rivanna supercomputer cluster and, since coming to the University last fall, has given momentum to computational sciences and Data Science Institute research at the University.

Awarded annually since 1955, Sloan Research Fellowships honor early-career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as rising stars the next generation of scientific leaders. Fellows, drawn from a diverse range of fields, receive $50,000 to further their research. This year, the foundation selected 126 researchers from 57 institutions in the U.S. and Canada.

Becoming a Sloan Research Fellow means joining a long and distinguished tradition of scientific explorers who have gone on to make the most meaningful and significant discoveries, Daniel L. Goroff, director of the fellowship program, said.

Past Sloan Research Fellows have developed notable careers and include such intellectual luminaries as physicist Richard Feynman and game theorist John Nash. Forty-three fellows have received a Nobel Prize in their respective field, 16 have won the Fields Medal in mathematics, 65 have received the National Medal of Science, and 14 have won the John Bates Clark Medal in economics.

Before arriving at U.Va., Davis was a senior research associate at the Canadian Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics. Prior to that, he was a NASA Chandra Fellow and member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Shane is very deserving of the Sloan Research Fellowship, which is one of the highest honors in the U.S. for a junior faculty member in the sciences, said U.Va. astronomy department chair Craig Sarazin. He has done particularly important work on how black holes produce the light which allows us to detect them, and he already is one of the worlds most productive theoretical astrophysicists. I believe that Shane is now the leading expert in the world on calculating the spectra of accretion disks around black holes.

Sarazin noted that Daviss expertise on computer modeling fits well with existing strengths in the astronomy department; for example, U.Va.s John Hawley won the 2013 Shaw Prize in Astronomy for his computer simulations of material flowing into black holes.

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Rising Star: Astronomer Wins Prestigious Early-Career Sloan Research Fellowship