Three people stand side by side holding a commemorative plaque.
Michael Troxel was awarded NASA's Exceptional Public Achievement Medal for his achievement in coordinating and delivering the OpenUniverse 2024 Roman/Rubin image simulations campaign. (Photo courtesy of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

Michael Troxel Awarded NASA’s Exceptional Public Achievement Medal

Trinity Communications

Michael Troxel, associate professor of Physics and co-director of the SPACE Initiative at Duke, was recently awarded the NASA Exceptional Public Achievement Medal for his leadership in coordinating and delivering the OpenUniverse 2024 Roman/Rubin image simulations campaign. 

The cosmos, with an inset showing a zoomed-in view of a few galaxies.
OpenUniverse simulation of what NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could see when it launches by May 2027. (Photo courtesy of C. Hirata, K. Cao and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)

The OpenUniverse 2024 project was a large-scale simulation effort that created a synthetic view of the universe as it will be seen by NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory. These simulations — generated on DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory Theta supercomputer — produce hundreds of terabytes of realistic imaging data spanning tens of square degrees of sky. This dataset allows scientists to calibrate tools, test data analysis methods and prepare for the unprecedented volume and richness of data expected from Roman and Rubin. 

Medal with a blue ribbon, in a case.
NASA’s Exceptional Public Achievement Medal (Photo courtesy of Troxel)

The simulated images preview how Roman will map galaxies, detect transient phenomena such as supernovae, and explore fundamental cosmological questions about dark energy and the structure of the universe. By enabling researchers to practice on realistic mock data before launch, OpenUniverse enhances the scientific return of these major observatories. 

The NASA Exceptional Public Achievement Medal is presented to non-government employees in recognition of distinguished contributions from the broader scientific and technical community. Recipients have included artists, communicators and scientists whose work has significantly advanced NASA’s visibility or mission objectives. The Medal honors a significant specific achievement or substantial improvement in science, technology, operations, efficiency or service that materially contributes to NASA’s mission, recognizing high-quality results, innovative approaches and meaningful impact on the agency’s goals.