Yu-Ting Chang (YC’2027 Astrophysics major) was presented with a Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Award for his research with Chiara Mingarelli, Assistant Professor in Physics, at the 247th American Astronomical Society (AAS) Meeting, January 4-8, 2026, in Phoenix, AZ.
Chang commented, “In 2023, NANOGrav found evidence for a gravitational wave background (GWB): ripples in spacetime generated by orbiting pairs of supermassive black holes. The goal of my project was to improve the distinction between the signal (gravitational waves) and the noise. The measured GWB properties were different from predictions, in particular as the amplitude was too loud. This discrepancy might be caused by unaccounted noise in the data, such as noise from interstellar scattering off of gas and dust. I used simulations to determine the effects of adding a particular type of pulsar noise model, and found that it should indeed be incorporated in future analyses for better measurements of the gravitational wave background.
It is an honor to receive the Chambliss award. I’ve been working on this project since my sophomore fall, so it was very exciting to share my results at the 247th American Astronomical Society meeting in Phoenix. I couldn’t have done it without the mentorship and guidance from Bjorn Larsen, Professor Mingarelli, and the overall NANOGrav collaboration, and support from the NASA CT Space Grant and Yale STARS program.”
Mingarelli stated, “Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Yu-Ting Chang, who was selected as a Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Award winner at the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in January 2026. Yu-Ting was one of just 21 winners out of 480 contestants. His poster, “Effects of Chromatic Noise Mismodeling on Gravitational Wave Background Detection,” highlights his work developing methods to separate the gravitational wave background signal from pulsar noise in NANOGrav data. Yu-Ting is currently finishing his first paper and has played an important role in several upcoming NANOGrav publications. We are thrilled to see him recognized.”
The Astronomy Achievement Student Awards are given to recognize exemplary research by undergraduate and graduate students who present at one of the poster sessions at the meetings of the AAS. Awardees are honored with a Chambliss medal and recognition on AAS’s website.
Some recent Yale affiliated winners were:
- 246th AAS Meeting (Anchorage, AK)
- Andy Nilipour, YC’2025
- Sean Lewis, YC’2026 (Honorable Mention)
- 245th AAS Meeting (National Harbor, MD)
- Camille Chiu, YC’2026
- Juliana Karp, YC’2025
- 242nd AAS Meeting (Albuquerque, NM)
- Sally Jiang, YC’2023 (Honorable Mention)
- 241st AAS Meeting (Seattle, WA)
- Emma Louden, Ph.D. 2025
- Anavi Uppal, YC’2024
- Jay Baptista, YC’2023 (Honorable Mention)
- Autumn Pierce, YC’2024 (Honorable Mention)