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.
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