Anna Y. Q. Ho, assistant professor of astronomy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has received the 2026 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize from the American Astronomical Society. Presented annually, the award recognizes an early-career scientist for their outstanding achievement, over the past five years, in observational astronomical research based on measurements of radiation from an astronomical object.
Dr. Ho was honored for her investigations of extreme explosions powered by stellar death. Her research has revealed ultra-bright, short-duration optical flaring associated with a new class of visual events called Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients (LFBOTs).
“The origin of LFBOTs is a pressing mystery in time-domain astronomy,” said Dr. Ho. “The proposed models would all be important for our understanding of the lives and deaths of stars, as well as the formation and growth of black holes. I am so fortunate to be able to tackle cosmic puzzles with my students, postdocs, and collaborators.”
Before joining the Cornell faculty in 2022, Dr. Ho was a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow with the astronomy department at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as an affiliate with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she majored in physics. Dr. Ho received both her master’s degree and Ph.D. in astrophysics from the California Institute of Technology.