{"id":226383,"date":"2025-03-04T07:00:51","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T12:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=226383"},"modified":"2025-03-03T15:24:54","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T20:24:54","slug":"computational-astrophysicist-daniel-angles-alcazar-awarded-sloan-research-fellowship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2025\/03\/computational-astrophysicist-daniel-angles-alcazar-awarded-sloan-research-fellowship\/","title":{"rendered":"Computational Astrophysicist Daniel Angl\u00e9s-Alc\u00e1zar Awarded Sloan Research Fellowship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Angl\u00e9s-Alc\u00e1zar, assistant professor of physics, has been awarded a 2025 Sloan Research Fellowship, one of the most competitive honors for early-career researchers in the United States and Canada.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Angl\u00e9s-Alc\u00e1zar was <\/span>one of 126 scientists selected by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation<\/span><\/a> for the fellowship, which recognizes researchers for their exceptional creativity and potential to lead in their fields. The fellowship provides a two-year, $75,000 grant to support research at the recipient\u2019s discretion.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Daniel
Daniel Angl\u00e9s-Alc\u00e1zar, assistant professor of physics and 2025 Sloan Research Fellow. (Photo courtesy of Daniel Angl\u00e9s-Alc\u00e1zar).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“It\u2019s a great honor to be selected as a Sloan Fellow,” says Angl\u00e9s-Alc\u00e1zar. “This is a significant recognition for our research program, and I am very grateful to the long-term collaborators and mentors that have supported me throughout\u00a0my career.”<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“The Sloan Research Fellows represent the very best of early-career science, embodying the creativity, ambition, and rigor that drive discovery forward,\u201d says Adam F. Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. \u201cThese extraordinary scholars are already making significant contributions, and we are confident they will shape the future of their fields in remarkable ways.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A computational astrophysicist, Angl\u00e9s-Alc\u00e1zar\u2019s research focuses on developing simulations on supercomputers to understand how galaxies form and evolve. He uses theoretical models to interpret observations of galaxies, including how supermassive black holes impact galaxy evolution.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Observations suggest that when supermassive black holes grow, they release a huge amount of energy in the form of powerful winds or large-scale jets. However, the details of this process remain a mystery, according to Angl\u00e9s-Alc\u00e1zar.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s still a big enigma,\u201d he says. \u201cIn our models, we can make predictions of what happens when supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies power these large-scale winds or jets. Based on those models, we can infer that supermassive black holes indeed play a key role in how massive galaxies evolve<\/span>,<\/span> as well as the larger scale structures in the universe.”<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Simulation
Simulation modeling the evolution of a group of galaxies (left) and zooming in down to the nuclear region of the main galaxy (right), where the central supermassive black hole grows and affects its environment. (Photo courtesy of Daniel Angl\u00e9s-Alc\u00e1zar and the FIRE collaboration).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Prior to joining UConn in 2019, Angl\u00e9s-Alc\u00e1zar was a research fellow with the Flatiron Institute from 2017 to 2019. In 2014, he was selected as a <\/span>postdoctoral fellow with the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) at Northwestern University<\/span><\/a>. Most recently, he was one of 25 recipients of the 2023 Cottrell Scholar Award<\/span>s<\/span> from <\/span>the Research Corporation for Science Advancement.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Angl\u00e9s-Alc\u00e1zar plans to use the funding to support student researchers, fund conference travel, and enhance computational resources for his work.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“Receiving this fellowship is really a great honor,” says Angl\u00e9s-Alc\u00e1zar. “I’m also very grateful to the students and postdocs in my group for the amazing work they do, and just excited that this award will enable us to continue pushing the frontiers of computational galaxy formation in new directions.”<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Angl\u00e9s-Alc\u00e1zar, assistant professor of physics, was one of 126 outstanding early-career scientists to be selected for the honor from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation this year<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":226384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2275,2429,2226,2460,2235],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2618],"class_list":["post-226383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-affairs","category-awards-scholarships","category-clas","category-faculty","category-today-homepage"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-26 22:15:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226383"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226437,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226383\/revisions\/226437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/226384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226383"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=226383"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=226383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}