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Awards & Prizes

DATE2024.09.13 #Awards & Prizes

Ms. Kaho Morii has received the 19th L'ORÉAL-UNESCO For Women in Science Japan Fellowship Award


Kaho Morii

 

Ms. Kaho Morii, a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Astronomy, received the L'ORÉAL-UNESCO For Women in Science Japan Fellowship Award. This award supports and honors promising female scientists who have made outstanding achievements. Ms. Morii received this honor for her research on "From Clouds to Stars: Statistical Study of the Very Early Stages of High-mass Star Formation”. 

Conventional star formation research has mainly focused on low-mass stars. However, the formation processes of massive stars (stars with masses greater than 10 times that of the Sun) have not been fully understood because they are few in number, evolve rapidly, and are located in distant regions. Massive stars are important objects that have a large impact on the galactic environment and eventually become black holes or neutron stars via supernova explosions. Therefore, whether the formation process is the same as that of low -mass stars is an important open question in astronomy. 

To address this issue, Ms. Morii used the radio interferometer, Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile to observe the infrared dark clouds, which is believed to be the birthplace of massive stars, and produced the largest catalog of dense cores ever made. The results indicate that massive stars are formed by the growth of small, low-mass cores that take in gas. We are still working vigorously to construct more precise formation scenarios.

Ms. Morii takes everything very seriously, and has conducted the huge amount of data analysis almost single-handedly. While experimenting with various analytical methods, she has been able to reach a new discovery of the mechanism of gas acquisition in the process of massive star formation, which is the result of her daily efforts. I sincerely hope that she will continue to take on even more important scientific challenges and play an even more active role in many fields in the future. 

The L'ORÉAL-UNESCO For Women in Science Japan Fellowship Awards Ceremony : credit L'Oréal

 

L'ORÉAL-UNESCO For Women in Science Japan Fellowship Awards

The 19th L'ORÉAL-UNESCO Women in Science Japan Encouragement Award 2024 Ceremony

(Responsibility: Associate Professor Fumitaka Nakamura, Department of Astronomy, NAOJ)