Professors Natalya Gomez (Earth and Planetary Sciences) and Daryl Haggard (Physics) have been awarded 2024 Arthur B. McDonald Fellowships from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
These awards recognize early-career academic researchers, providing them with a $250,000 research grant over two years.
“These two outstanding and innovative researchers are contributing directly to McGill’s prominent position as a global leader in climate and astrophysics research,” said Dominique Bérubé, Vice-President of Research and Innovation. “McGill congratulates Professor Gomez and Professor Haggard, and thanks NSERC for its support of early-career research.”
Both are members of McGill’s Trottier Space Institute. Gomez holds a Canada Research Chair in Ice Sheet – Sea Level Interactions and Haggard holds one in Multi-Messenger Astrophysics.
“I am immensely proud to have Professor Gomez and Professor Haggard in our Faculty,” said Bruce Lennox, Dean of the Faculty of Science. “These Fellowships, which are truly national in scope and scale, are a testament to the outstanding contributions each has already made in their respective fields as researchers and scientific leaders.
Natalya Gomez, Earth and Planetary Sciences
A climate scientist and geophysicist, Gomez combines numerical modelling and observational tools to improve predictions of global sea levels and polar ice loss in a warming world.
By shedding light on how ice sheets and sea levels respond to rising temperatures, Gomez and her group seek to not only transform our ability to monitor changing polar regions and coastlines, but also better inform policy-makers and communities about how to mitigate climate change effects on global populations and infrastructure.
“I am extremely honoured to be a McDonald Fellow,” said Gomez. “This opportunity will enable me to advance understanding of sea level rise, while engaging with communities and decision-makers to shape the science into actionable knowledge for societal resilience in the face of climate change.”
Gomez has been nominated to numerous international leadership positions, including steering committees within leading organizations such as the World Climate Research Program and the International Geodesy Association. As a contributing author of the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report and member of the National Sea Level Guidance Committee for Canada, Gomez has provided expertise to inform governments on climate change in Canada and beyond.
In addition to connecting her research to policy, Gomez was part of the development team behind McGill’s cross-disciplinary Climate Crisis and Climate Actions course and serves as an organizer or lecturer in several international summer schools for graduate students, including the annual Advanced Climate Dynamics Courses.
In 2019, Gomez was awarded the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Cryosphere Early Career Award, and in 2023 she received the AGU James B. Macelwane Medal.
Daryl Haggard, Physics
Haggard’s research explores black holes and neutron stars, the densest known objects in the universe.
When the first neutron star merger was detected in 2017, Haggard’s team led observations using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to identify the first electromagnetic counterpart to a gravitational wave source, a groundbreaking discovery that Québec Science named a Top 10 Discovery of 2018.
Haggard’s McGill Extreme Gravity & Accretion Group (MEGA) also leads multi-wavelength and time domain surveys of growing supermassive black holes including Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center of the Milky Way.
“I am deeply honoured to be a McDonald Fellow,” said Haggard. “The Fellowship will support me as I push forward observational investigations of matter and light near black holes’ event horizons, search for a new population of black hole and neutron star mergers, and work to ensure that Canadian scientists remain at the forefront of black hole research via participation in next-generation telescopes on the ground and in space.”
A trusted expert in her field, Haggard is a member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration and was part of the EHT team that released the first two images of a black hole’s shadow in 2019 and 2022. She is also co-investigator on multiple space missions under development by the Canadian Space Agency, NASA and the European Space Agency.
Haggard received the 2020 McGill Principal’s Prize for Outstanding Emerging Researchers, and in 2022 she was awarded both the Royal Society of Canada’s Rutherford Memorial Medal and the Canadian Society of Physicists’ Herzberg Medal.