About the Begelman Group

JILA Fellow and the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences (APS) at the University of Colorado Boulder Distinguished Professor Mitch Begelman has been inducted as a 2025 American Astronomical Society (AAS) Fellow. Joining Professor Begelman in this recognition are APS Professors James Green and J. Michael Shull, now an Adjunct Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Together, their contributions underscore CU Boulder’s leadership in astrophysics and planetary sciences.

JILA is thrilled to announce that Dr. Mitch Begelman, a JILA Fellow and esteemed professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences. This prestigious honor is bestowed in recognition of his distinguished and ongoing contributions to original research in astrophysics.

Many researchers at JILA feel honored to work with several big-name scientists within a specialized field of physics. One of these is graduate student Hannalore Gerling-Dunsmore, who is mentored by JILA Fellow Mitch Begelman and Fellow Adjoint Phil Armitage. Studying with these two well-known physicists, Gerling-Dunsmore's work focuses on accretion disk survival, or the conditions needed for the accretion disks of the supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies      to survive gravitational instability. Her research, along with the support of her advisors, has helped award Gerling-Dunsmore with a prestigious pre-doctoral fellowship at the Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA). This fellowship is sponsored by the Simons Foundation in New York City. According to Gerling-Dunsmore, the Simons foundation funds: "science that is especially computational in nature and often does not      get a lot of funding from the U.S. government." This funding allows researchers like Gerling-Dunsmore to further explore their interests while learning new research skills. 

Mitch Begelman becomes the 5th JILA Fellow to be named a Distinguished Professor named CU Distinguished Professor.