2025 Alum Sam Crowe Awarded National Honor for Astrophysics Research at UVA
An extraordinary undergraduate career for 2025 College graduate Sam Crowe has yielded one more prestigious honor for the double major in astronomy-physics and history.
The American Physical Society announced last week that Crowe, who is continuing his studies in the United Kingdom this fall at the University of Oxford as the University of Virginia’s 57th Rhodes Scholar, had been awarded the 2025 LeRoy Apker Award for his “groundbreaking research achievements” in astrophysics.
Crowe became the world’s first undergraduate student to lead a James Webb Space Telescope General project in 2023. The findings made by Crowe and his team of researchers from around the globe led to the publication of two papers in The Astrophysical Journal. Crowe’s work on detailed numerical simulations — radiation magneto-hydrodynamical models — shows how structures develop in highly magnetized, clumpy and turbulent expanding star-forming regions.
“We are enormously proud of Sam for receiving the APS Apker Award, one of the highest national honors for undergraduate research in physics,” Department of Astronomy chair Steven Majewski said. “Sam is a generational talent. This award celebrates not only his extraordinary accomplishments, but also the promise of a career that is already shaping our understanding of the universe.”
Crowe began his research career as a first year in the College, following a spring semester research talk delivered by astronomy professor Jonathan Tan in one of his introductory classes. Crowe approached Tan after the talk to ask about opportunities to work with him, an introduction that led to research collaborations with his new mentor over the next three years, including a summer in Sweden working with Tan’s research group.
In addition to the Rhodes Scholarship, Crowe also earned a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Scholarship during his undergraduate years, “along with virtually every award at UVA for which he was eligible,” Majewski said.
Crowe will pursue a doctorate in astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology after completing a master’s degree in history of science, medicine and technology at Oxford.
Crowe said he is honored to have been selected for the Apker Award, "which I see as the culmination of four years of tireless instruction, mentoring and support from both the astronomy and physics departments at UVA."
"Graduating any astronomy-physics major is an enormous effort from both departments in terms of teaching alone, but maintaining a robust and dynamic research program to support that classroom instruction is a Herculean effort," Crowe added. "I am very grateful to have found an environment at UVA that places high priority on research as a pillar of undergraduate education. I see this award as a reflection of the strength of that prioritization."