Krupa Pothiwala, a senior in the astronomy and astrophysics program, recently earned a Pioneer Award worth $1,000 from The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi.
The Pioneer Award is awarded to students who have developed the necessary leadership and research skills on their way to becoming successful scholars. Pothiwala is one of only 50 students across the country to receive it.
“It’s honestly a true honor to be selected as one of the Pioneer awardees,” Pothiwala said.
Pothiwala’s research experience began when she joined a computational astrophysics research project focused on modeling gamma-ray burst afterglows.
Pothiwala became a Phi Kappa Phi initiate in the spring with Florida Tech’s award-winning chapter, but she has been involved in other organizations on campus throughout her time at Florida Tech. She currently works for the Ortega Observatory, and in 2024, she was president of three organizations — the Students Physics Society, the Society of Astronomical Students, and Students for Exploration and Development of Space — which combined into one organization called S3 under her leadership.
As a part of S3, Pothiwala attended a number of conferences including Space Vision, the Global Physics Summit, and the Conference for Undergraduate Women and Gender Minorities in Physics. These conferences ultimately gave her the opportunity to present the research that she had a hand in conducting.
Set to graduate in 2027, Pothiwala plans to pursue a Ph.D. in numerical relativity to study astronomical events like black holes and neutron stars using computer simulations, or general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamics, an area of study that combines plasma and fluid physics with the theory of relativity to study how magnetic matter reacts to gravitational fields.
Phi Kappa Phi is one of the oldest and most selective collegiate honors societies for all academic disciplines. For more on Florida Tech’s Phi Kappa Phi chapter, visit www.fit.edu/phi-kappa-phi, and for more information on the Pioneer Award and other Phi Kappa Phi awards, visit www.phikappaphi.org.
