NOIRLab’s Lori Allen Elected 2023 AAAS Fellow

Lori Allen Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA

Lori Allen, Mid-Scale Observatories (MSO) Director at NSF NOIRLab, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers. MSO encompasses both Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile and Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.

NOIRLab is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona.

Allen was elected as an AAAS Fellow for “exceptional leadership in advancing ground-based optical-infrared astronomy.”

The 2023 Fellows class includes 502 scientists, engineers and innovators across 24 AAAS disciplinary Sections. The newly elected Fellows overwhelmingly represent the fields of biological sciences, chemistry, medical sciences and engineering followed by neuroscience and physics.

The new Fellows will each receive a certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin (representing science and engineering, respectively) to commemorate their election and will be celebrated at a forum on 21 September 2024. That evening, AAAS will also celebrate the program’s 150th anniversary at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. The 2023 Fellows class will also be featured in the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal Science in April 2024.

Allen said in her AAAS Fellow Statement, “Thanks to the talented and dedicated staff at Cerro Tololo and Kitt Peak and to the amazing partnerships we have with federal agencies, universities and local stakeholders, we are able to provide state-of-the-art capabilities to serve the astronomical community in new and better ways.”

The tradition of AAAS Fellows began in 1874. The AAAS Fellow honor comes with an expectation that recipients maintain the highest standards of professional ethics and scientific integrity.

AURA congratulates Lori on this honor!