Kapteyn Blaauw Prize Committee

Who are we?
Eline Tolstoy (scientific chair), Tim Lichtenberg, Erwin de Blok, Thijs van der Hulst, Lingyu Wang and Edwin van Bloois (executive chair)

What do we do?
The Kapteyn Blaauw Prize Committee was newly installed in 2023 and its role is two-fold, namely:
(i) select the new Blaauw professor and ensure a host and
(ii) support the board of the institute with the selection of candidates and preparation of nominations for the many prizes that are awarded yearly to astronomers.

How do we work?
(i) In many cases nominations can be made by supervisors and there are no limits to the number of candidates. In these cases the committee simply need to encourage staff to put their students, PhDs or PDs forward,
(ii) In other cases, the number of nominees is limited to one or two per institute and need to be selected/nominated by the director. In that case, the committee helps to come up with a short ranked list of potential nominees with a short motivation. The board of the institute then makes the final decision, and the committee can help prepare the nomination forms with the help of the supervisors,
(iii) Sometimes staff can be nominated and in this case the board of the institute may also ask the committee for names, but the board may also make it’s own selection and make the final (confidential) decision on the candidate and
(iv) In rare instances nominations can only be done by the director or the board, sometimes in strict confidence, and no input is asked from the committee.