Elizabeth Ferrara has been awarded the title "Hero of NANOGrav" for the month of July!
Nominator #1: "Her efforts in the leadup to the release of the 15-year papers and the NSF press event were extraordinary. Her coordination of press materials was a critical part of this work, as was her wrangling of individual participants throughout the release process.
She has played a critical role in maintaining up-to-date observing lists at our telescopes, especially a few yeas ago when we switched to wideband back-ends and needed to check the possibility of observing any known millisecond pulsar."
Nominator #2: "Elizabeth ran our planning for the NANOGrav data and papers release with astonishing aplomb! Elizabeth marshalled NANOGrav putting together a truly compelling packet of accessible information for the public and the scientific community, with tight timelines."
Nominator #3: "Elizabeth has been working tirelessly over the past months to organize the announcement event, embargoed press briefing, and coordinating with NSF and institutional press offices; all while dealing gracefully with a stressful landscape that changed daily or at times more often. The entire rollout of our results, press coverage, and announcement event went incredibly well, and because of this NANOGrav results had a huge public impact. This is due in large part to Elizabeth's efforts. We quite literally cannot thank her enough."
Nominator #4: "Her dedication and drive to achieve nothing short of a miracle for our 15yr results announcement was extraordinary. Elizabeth did the impossible, and we owe her many times over."
Nominator #5: "Simply put, we would not have had 10% of the success of our announcement without the enormous effort and coordination Elizabeth put in over many weeks. With so many moving parts to keep track of, she did so heroically."