The Astronomy Department is thrilled to have received an endowment from the Michele and David Mittelman Family Foundation that will provide ongoing funding to support two Columbia undergraduate students to carry out astronomical research each summer. This endowment will give countless young astronomers the opportunity to work directly with our faculty to explore cutting edge research and gain valuable data analysis skills. The student research efforts in the initial years will be focused around the MDW Survey, an exciting new project that is mapping the entire sky in H-alpha emission. The MDW survey is one of the deepest surveys of the ionized gas in our Galaxy and we are proud to lead the effort to calibrate the data it is producing and release it to the public.
