2023
OzGrav Student Rising Star Award
The nominations for the 2023 OzGrav Achievement Awards can be viewed at this site. Mine reads: "Isobel, nominated for the Rising Star award, authored eight first-author papers during her impactful PhD, focusing on binary black hole formation and developing methods to measure their eccentricity. Her leadership in Bilby's development and contributions to high-impact LIGO–Virgo papers, along with being awarded the Robert Street Doctoral Prize, exemplify her exceptional promise, making her a strong candidate for the award." Thank you very much to those who nominated and voted for me!
Charlene Heisler Prize Honourable Mention - Astronomical Society of Australia
2022
GWIC-Braccini Prize Honourable Mention - Gravitational Wave International Committee
See here to see the winning thesis and the complete list of honourable mentions.
Robert Street Prize - annual prize awarded to the best PhD thesis in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Monash University
This prize was presented by the late Robert Street's daughter Alison. You can watch a recording of the acceptance ceremony here.
2021
Norris Family Award for Outstanding Author Contribution by a Graduate Research Student to a Published Scholarly Research Output - Monash University, Faculty of Science
This prize was awarded for my first-author work on the potential formation scenarios for the first intermediate-mass black hole ever confidently detected, signalled by the gravitational-wave signal GW190521: read the paper here.
2020
Awarded place in sixth Homeward Bound cohort
Homeward Bound is a transformational leadership initiative for women in STEMM. As a part of this group, I attended leadership training seminars, workshops and classes. Our training culminated in a three-week voyage to Antarctica, which was postponed due to the pandemic, but went ahead in November 2023! You can read more about Homeward Bound here and read biographies for myself and the other members of the sixth cohort here. During the trip, I wrote a small piece on the history of the Falkland Islanders, which can be seen on the Homeward Bound Instagram account. Below, you can see a photo of us all about to board the ship (the Island Sky) at our departure port in Puerto Madryn. Can you spot me? I'm standing in the back row, about 14 from the left, wearing a hat and sunglasses.
Outreach Award - OzGrav Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery
Early Career Researcher Poster Prize - Royal Astronomical Society
You can view the announcement and also download my poster here.
2019
Best Student Talk Award - Astronomical Society of Australia
Photo credit Randall Trott
Best Student Poster Award - OzGrav Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery
You can download the above poster in pdf format here.
2018
JL William Scholarship - Monash University
International Postgraduate Research Scholarship - Monash University
Nolan Merrill Prize for Best Master’s (MSci) Project in Physics - University of Birmingham
Photo credit Dine Romero
Best MSci Project Poster in Physics - University of Birmingham
