Aaron Johnson, Hero of NANOGrav
Aaron Johnson has been awarded the title "Hero of NANOGrav" for the month of August!
Nominator #1: "Aaron Johnson joined NANOGrav a few years ago, and he's made a significant impact in a relatively short amount of time. The biggest thing he has done is to play a major role in our first code review -- a huge task that is a crucial part of the 15yr papers. In the course of that code review, Aaron uncovered a handful of bugs that had been in the code for years, and we can now be more confident in our software. He's also worked hard to put together tutorials for the 12.5yr GWB analyses, which are an important tool for getting students and other scientists involved in our science."
Nominator #2: "Aaron acted as a Zoom host for Amaldi15 for a whopping 1,080 minutes (aka 18 hours)! He was the sole West Coast volunteer, and many of his sessions were 12 am to 3 am (instead of 3 am to 6 am for the majority of the volunteers, who were East Coast -- but was that really easier!?) He also Zoom-hosted and chaired a two hour session when a chair didn't show up."
Nominator #3: "Aaron has been tireless in his efforts to make our GW software rigorously tested and documented. He led the enterprise code review and pipeline paper for our 15yr results release, which was a monumentally important process. He's also committed to making our search pipeline faster and more efficient, which is going to pay dividends down the road as we expand our array. Aaron is a fantastic team player and important member of NANOGrav. He deserves this!"