2024.09.30

Ms. Kaho Morii Receives the 19th L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Japan Fellowship Award

The L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Japan Fellowship Award Program Ceremony (Credit: Nihon L’Oréal K. K.)

Ms. Kaho Morii, a third-year doctoral student in the University of Tokyo Department of Astronomy and entrusted graduate student at NAOJ, received the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Japan Fellowship Award. Based on the slogan, “The world needs Science, and Science needs Women,” this award supports and honors promising female scientists who have made outstanding achievements. Ms. Morii received this honor for her research “From Clouds to Stars: Statistical Study of the Very Early Stages of High-mass Star Formation.”

Conventional star formation research has mainly focused on low-mass stars. However, the formation processes of massive stars (stars with masses greater than 10 times that of the Sun) have not been fully understood because they are few in number, evolve rapidly, and are located in distant regions. Massive stars are important objects that have a large impact on the galactic environment and eventually become black holes or neutron stars via supernova explosions. Therefore, whether or not the formation process is the same as that of low-mass stars is an important open question in astronomy.

To address this issue, Ms. Morii used ALMA in Chile to observe infrared dark clouds, which are believed to be the birthplaces of massive stars, and produced the largest catalog of dense cloud cores ever made. The results indicate that massive stars are formed by the growth of small, low-mass cores that take in gas. We are still working vigorously to construct more precise formation scenarios.

Her supervisor, Associate Professor Fumitaka Nakamura comments, “Ms. Morii takes everything very seriously, and has conducted the huge amount of data analysis almost single-handedly. While experimenting with various analytical methods, she has been able to reach a new discovery on the mechanism of gas acquisition in the process of massive star formation, which is the result of her daily efforts. I sincerely hope that she will continue to take on even more important scientific challenges and play an even more active role in many fields in the future.”