Writing on a snowy winter day with all its serenity, I reflect on the powerful momentum 2025 has created for the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. It has been a year of great achievements and discovery — a fitting prelude to our upcoming 40th anniversary and CITA@40 celebrations.

The year was headlined by world-class accolades for our senior faculty. We were proud to see Professor J. Richard Bond awarded the 2025 Shaw Prize in Astronomy for his foundational role in modern cosmology. Simultaneously, Professor Norman Murray achieved a historic string of honours, including election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. These honours underscore the impact of founding CITA faculty to the field of astrophysics and society at large.

Our researchers also keep pushing further the limits of scientific discovery. Through international partnerships, CITAzens have driven breakthroughs in the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA gravitational wave catalogs, the Event Horizon Telescope’s imaging of black hole environments, and the Simons Collaboration on Extreme Electrodynamics. From simulating magnetized turbulence to refining the age of the universe via the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, our work remains the essential bridge between complex theory and world-leading observation.

Growth and renewal are equally vital to our mission. In 2025, we were thrilled to welcome Professor Pratika Dayal to our faculty, and we eagerly anticipate the 2026 arrival of Professor Sara Seager as the North Star Distinguished Professor. We are also extremely proud with the achievements of our postdoctoral fellows and graduate students, who won an impressive number of international fellowships and published in leading journals.

Beyond our walls, CITA’s global footprint has expanded through new strategic partnerships with Kavli IPMU (Tokyo) and Tsinghua University (Beijing), alongside renewed ties with the Flatiron Institute (New York) and Academia Sinica (Taipei). These agreements solidify CITA as a primary node in the international network of theoretical physics.

As we look toward 2026, all eyes are on CITA@40. This milestone gathering in Toronto will be more than an anniversary; it will be a reunion of our global alumni to celebrate our history and chart the future of the astrophysics field.

I want to thank our faculty, staff, and researchers for your tireless dedication to science. Your work places CITA at the heart of cosmic exploration and discovery.

Sincerely,

–Shantanu Basu

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

I hope this message finds you and your family healthy and safe. As we approach the closing of another year, one that has seen more intense conflict and sorrow in many parts of the world, we may be tempted to lose sight of our collective future as CITAzens and as humans. Instead of yielding to this temptation, let us be mindful of our cosmic perspective in these times and remember that while our planet and our species may not be special in any Copernican sense we are, nevertheless, precious. Let us envision and ensure a future filled with peace and deeper understanding of our Universe and one another.

I came to CITA because I believe in the power of theorists to imagine the future. Not just in understanding cosmology and magnetic flares and dust grains and planets, but in understanding the “effective theories” of social relations, economics, computation. I believe in the power of theorists to create not just new understanding of the world, but new vistas and horizons for humans to explore. I cherish the role of theory in this endeavor and I am committed to its flourishing wherever I am. Remember, as Marcus Aurelius reminds us, we are “born for cooperation”.

As I look back on 2023, I see so many achievements and so much progress. I am deeply proud of everything we have accomplished together as a community, only a very tiny fraction of which is contained in these pages. I wish you a happy, healthy holiday season and a peaceful New Year.

-Juna