A picture of Anna O'Grady over a plaid background featuring the NHFP logo.

Anna O鈥橤rady Named NASA Hubble Fellow

By Amy Pavlak Laird Email Amy Pavlak Laird

Heidi Opdyke

Anna O鈥橤rady didn鈥檛 just read The Illustrated Atlas of the Universe in eighth grade 鈥� she inhaled it. The images from the Hubble Space Telescope inside inspired her so strongly she says her 鈥渂rain chemistry changed.鈥澛�

Now, the little girl who fell in love with those pictures is a 2026 NASA Hubble Fellow.聽

O鈥橤rady, currently a McWilliams Postdoctoral Fellow at 好色先生TV's McWilliams Center for Cosmology and Astrophysics, has been awarded one of the 2026 NASA Hubble Fellowships, among the most prestigious and competitive postdoctoral fellowships in astrophysics. She is one of 24 fellows selected from more than 650 applicants. The fellowship supports exceptionally promising early-career astrophysicists whose work addresses some of NASA鈥檚 most fundamental questions about the universe.聽

鈥淲hen I think about the incredible work done by past Hubble Fellows, including many of my colleagues, I鈥檓 truly humbled. It鈥檚 a tremendous privilege to be counted among this group,鈥� said O鈥橤rady, who will continue her work as a Hubble Fellow at Carnegie Mellon.聽

鈥淥ver the past three years at the McWilliams Center, it has been a pleasure to watch Anna develop an ambitious research program on massive binary stars and stellar populations in nearby galaxies, tackling fundamental questions about how massive stars evolve and end their lives. Her selection as a NASA Hubble Fellow 鈥� one of the most prestigious and competitive awards in astrophysics 鈥� is a well-deserved recognition of the importance of her work,鈥� said Tiziana DiMatteo, professor of physics and director of Carnegie Mellon鈥檚 McWilliams Center for Cosmology and Astrophysics.聽

鈥淲e are especially pleased that Anna has chosen to continue her research at Carnegie Mellon,鈥� DiMatteo added. 鈥淲ith a Hubble Fellowship, she could have gone anywhere, and her decision to remain here reflects the strength of the scientific community we have built at the McWilliams Center. I look forward to seeing what she will accomplish in the years ahead.鈥澛�

O鈥橤rady uses both ground- and space-based telescopes to study massive star pairs, or binaries. While some stars live solo, like our sun, most of the biggest stars in the universe have a companion. When the stars get close to each other, they can trade stellar material or even merge. These interactions play a major role in many areas of astrophysics, influencing everything from supernova explosions to the creation of gravitational waves. But scientists still don鈥檛 fully understand what happens during these stellar close encounters.聽

O鈥橤rady aims to change that. She studies yellow supergiant stars with companions in the Magellanic Clouds, two small galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. These satellite galaxies are perfect laboratories: close enough to see individual stars clearly, but distant enough to capture the entire galaxy as a whole.聽

She鈥檚 built a catalog of hundreds of possible yellow supergiant binaries. When they鈥檙e in this phase, these stars get really big really fast, making them ideal for studying mass transfer 鈥� the moment when one star becomes so large that it starts giving material to its companion.聽

鈥淥ne of the big things we鈥檙e interested in is the physics around mass transfer,鈥� O鈥橤rady said. 鈥淭he yellow supergiant phase is one of the prime areas where different types of mass transfer end up occurring, but yellow supergiant binaries have never been systematically studied as a population.鈥澛�

As a Hubble Fellow, O鈥橤rady will dive deeper into the population of yellow supergiant binaries she鈥檚 identified in the Magellanic Clouds. Her goal is to understand how these yellow supergiant binaries interact and how those interactions influence each star鈥檚 life. She will use data from the Gaia space observatory to map the stars鈥� orbits, and spectroscopy to learn more about how they transfer mass and identify stars who have evolved into something interesting, like a helium giant, after interacting with their companion.聽

Although she鈥檚 an observational astrophysicist, O鈥橤rady also works closely with theorists like Carnegie Mellon Assistant Professor Katie Breivik, who created COSMIC, a tool that simulates huge populations of stars and tracks how they evolve, interact, merge, and explode. The partnership allows O鈥橤rady to pair real-world observations with super powered simulations to answer some of the universe鈥檚 hardest questions.聽

O鈥橤rady joined the McWilliams Center for Cosmology and Astrophysics in 2023 after earning her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and B.Sc. from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador.聽

鈥淚t鈥檚 an exceptional research environment, and I鈥檝e genuinely enjoyed my time here. I鈥檝e been especially impressed by the breadth of expertise, and I鈥檓 grateful to continue being part of this community,鈥� O鈥橤rady said.