Physics Grad Student Receives Competitive UC Fellowship

Ph.D. student Micah Oeur has been awarded a 2024-2025 UC President’s Pre-Professoriate Fellowship to support her physics research and boost her goal to be a professor.

PPPF’s goal is to enhance faculty pathways for historically underrepresented groups, particularly Chicanx/Latinx, African Americans, American Indians/Native Americans, Filipinx and Pacific Islanders in all disciplines; women in STEM; and Asian Americans in the humanities and social sciences.

Oeur’s research interests include observation-simulation comparisons, testing novel tools in astronomy and the chemo-dynamical evolution of the Milky Way's disk.

The Cambodian American student from Long Beach is using Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE) cosmological zoom-in simulations to explore a new tool in astronomy — Orbital Torus Imaging — to determine how mass is distributed in our galaxy using the chemistry and motion of stars.

“I work in a part of the field called galactic archaeology, which works to understand the content and formation of our galaxy,” Oeur said. “By content, I mean how many stars, and how much gas and dark matter comprise our galaxy. Dark matter is not directly observable, but we know it’s there based on how stars and gas move.”

One way to study this, she said, is to examine how stars that contain different combinations of elements such as iron and magnesium move.

Oeur works in the lab of physics Professor Sarah Loebman’s, who inspired her to pursue the professoriate.

“I consider myself fortunate to collaborate with such a fierce advocate, someone who has joined, in equal parts, her extensive research acumen with an awareness to understand and uplift junior scientists who come from marginalized backgrounds, such as myself,” she said. “She embodies many qualities of the kind of professor I intend, someday, to become.”

In May, Oeur was honored by the Department of Physics with the Outstanding Graduate Student Service and Outreach award for receiving a microgrant from UC Merced’s Division of Equity Justice Inclusive Excellence. She used the funds to establish Equi-Tea, a monthly forum for discussions empowering women in physics at all career stages.

The fellowship will help her continue her research and transition to a successful academic career.

“The PPPF, through the generous combination of a graduate research fellowship and access to resources for professional development, will equip me to achieve my dream of becoming a professor at an R1 institution,” she said. “I hope to devote my career to the careful excavation of the universe’s hidden truths and to supporting students from underprivileged backgrounds, like me, in performing world-class astrophysics research.”