The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) has announced Alex Doner as the inaugural 2026 recipient of the Frank J. Crary Endowed Graduate Fellowship, an annual award recognizing exceptional graduate students pursuing research in planetary space environments.
“Alex’s broad experience from instrument development to scientific analysis is impressive and has much in common with the career of Frank Crary,” said LASP Senior Research Scientist Fran Bagenal, chair of the fellowship committee, which also includes LASP Research Scientists Vincent Dols, Mike Chaffin, and Parker Hinton.
Doner, a graduate student advised by LASP Senior Research Scientist and CU Boulder Professor of Physics Mihály Horányi, has been leading the Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter (SDC) on NASA’s New Horizons mission, the first student‑built instrument ever to fly in deep space, traveling to Pluto and beyond. As the student lead of SDC, Doner is responsible for operations, data management, archiving, scientific analysis, and even training the next graduate student lead.
Doner’s graduate thesis work focuses on the development of an instrument for a future lunar mission, the Lunar Meteoroid Monitor (LMM), which would detect meteoroids hitting the Moon—an area of growing importance as lunar exploration expands.
In addition, Doner is involved in the recent LASP-built Interstellar Dust Experiment (IDEX) instrument aboard the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission, which launched in September 2025 and is now orbiting at the first Lagrange Point, a million miles from Earth.
The fellowship was established to honor the life and scientific legacy of longtime LASP employee Frank J. Crary, a distinguished space physicist whose career spanned major NASA missions including Galileo, Deep Space 1, Cassini, Juno, and MAVEN. After earning his bachelor’s degree in physics and astrophysics from UC Berkeley in 1991, Crary completed his Ph.D. at CU Boulder in 1998, where his work as a LASP graduate student combined both Voyager and Galileo data to study the interaction of Io with the surrounding magnetospheric plasma.
Doner was nominated for the award by Horányi, who said he fondly recalls fascinating discussions with Crary, first as a graduate student and later as a colleague. “The nomination was, in part, a recognition of Alex as a promising early-career scientist,” he said, “someone continuing along the path Frank might have followed.”
Doner expressed gratitude for the award and reflected on the connection between his work and Crary’s legacy.
“Receiving an award named for Dr. Frank Crary is a real honor, and I am grateful for the chance to follow in the footsteps of scientists who helped build the field I now get to work in,” he said. “I love coming to LASP every day to work on special spacecraft, unique data, and problems that connect directly to planetary exploration.”
The fellowship, which awards $5,000 to graduate students at CU Boulder who have demonstrated interest in studying the space environment of a planetary object, is funded by contributions from Frank’s family and friends.
By Sara Pratt, LASP Sr. Communications Specialist
Founded a decade before NASA, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder (LASP) is revolutionizing human understanding of the cosmos. LASP is deeply committed to inspiring and educating the next generation of space explorers. From the first exploratory rocket measurements of Earth’s upper atmosphere to trailblazing observations of every planet in the solar system, LASP continues to build on its remarkable history with a nearly $1 billion portfolio of new research and engineering programs.
