We enter the New Year looking back on an eventful 2024. Our world was awash in change and transition. People in over 60 countries representing about half the world’s population participated in elections, which in many cases brought in new leadership. Ongoing global migration was another major story, with millions of people making journeys across the seas and continents as part of a historic and unprecedented movement of people. At CITA we witnessed our own transitions and welcomed a global cohort of staff and researchers. We said farewell to Director Juna Kollmeier, who had boldly ushered in many changes at CITA in recent years. We welcomed Peter Martin as Interim Director and numerous new staff members. Ling Tan is our new Department Manager, Alexandru Titeu started as a Research Institute Financial Officer, and Daniel Xiao joined as Computer Systems Administrator. CITA also added several postdoctoral fellows at the CITA Flagship in Toronto.
At the national level, CITA continued to support many National Fellows – postdoctoral researchers co-funded by CITA and a host supervisor based at any of the universities across the Canadian network. We added three new CITA National Fellows in 2024.
In 2024 we were happy to see eight of our postdoctoral fellows successfully transition into faculty, research, and industry positions. Four graduate students have earned their doctoral degrees and have moved onto postdoctoral positions. We also continued to support national and international conferences held in Canada. Ten such conferences were organized across the country, covering topics such as dark matter, galaxies, and globular clusters.
CITA is both a national institute and a global hub for astrophysics. Our CITA cohort represents members originating from every inhabited continent on the planet. I welcome you to read this Year in Review, learn about our amazing CITAzens and sample some of their accomplishments. As new cohorts of graduate and postdoctoral researchers join CITA, we are excited to move towards a new year of collaboration and discovery.
–Shantanu Basu
