26.04.2023

H.E.S.S. Prize awarded to Fabian Leuschner

Twice a year, the H.E.S.S. collaboration regularly recognizes exceptional contributions to the H.E.S.S. experiment, by awarding a prize to a young member of the collaboration. The Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics is a long-standing member of the H.E.S.S. collaboration and has contributed extensively to the construction, operation, maintenance and data analysis of the experiment. In spring 2023, for the first time, the prize was not granted to an individual member, but to a team of three PhD students and a postdoc. The team performed during a 1.5 year period an impressive, self-organized program to improve a core hardware and shower simulation software package of H.E.S.S. This software is regularly used inside the H.E.S.S. collaboration to analyze the gamma-ray data which the H.E.S.S. telescopes in Namibia continuously record. One of the team’s achievements was the successful and highly accurate description of the latest camera that was installed in the 28 m telescope of H.E.S.S. (FlashCam).

Fabian Leuschner, a PhD student at the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, is a member of this team and one of the four awardees of the 2023 spring’s H.E.S.S. prize edition. We warmly congratulate Fabian for the achievement and for this important recognition.