Julie McEnery Medal and Prize
The Julie McEnery medal and prize are awarded to the student of the MSc in Space Science and Technology degree with the top GPA across all modules of the programme AND with an overall programme GPA exceeding the threshold for a first class honours degree (i.e. > 3.68).
This award is named in honour of Dr. Julie McEnery, currently a Senior Scientist at NASA Goddard, where she is senior project scientist for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (formerly known as WFIRST), having previously served as the project scientist for the Fermi mission for 10 years.
Julie did her PhD in Astrophysics in UCD's School of Physics. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by UCD in 2015 and received a UCD Alumni of the Year award in 2018. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 2011.
This award is generously sponsored by the UCD School of Physics and the (opens in a new window)Irish Space Industry Group.
The first recipient was Eoin O'Neill in 2019 who became an Irish Research Council funded (opens in a new window)national trainee at ESOC in Darmstadt.
The 2020 award was made to Meadhbh Griffin, who carried out her (opens in a new window)internship project at ESTEC, developing software for a space radiation experiment. She subsequently became a Young Graduate Trainee at ESTEC and then moved to ISISPACE.
David Cleary was the 2021 recipient. After graduation he became a spaceflight controller at EUMETSAT.
Cuán de Barra was awarded the medal and prize in 2022 and is pursuing a PhD in gamma-ray astrophysics at UCD's Space Science group with Prof. Sheila McBreen.
The 2023 McEnery prize was awarded to Jonathan Flunger, who became an ESA Young Graduate Trainee working on the CAIRT Earth Observation mission candidate.