2026-Jan-20: The VERITAS Collaboration is pleased to recognize the recipients of the 2025 "Outstanding Contribution Awards". Each year the collaboration recognizes exceptional work by two individuals - a graduate student (the Simon Swordy Outstanding Contribution Award) and a postdoctoral researcher (the Trevor Weekes Outstanding Contribution Award), to "...formally recognize the significant contributions of more early-career members of the collaboration in the critical service work that enables scientific publications of VERITAS, but do not result in any scientific publications directly".

This year's recipients are:

Samantha Wong (Simon Swordy Award) - For her exceptional and sustained service to the VERITAS Collaboration, particularly her leadership in validating and integrating the Gammapy analysis framework for VERITAS. Since 2024, Samantha has served as the VERITAS development lead for Gammapy, organizing bi-weekly coordination calls, working closely with the international Gammapy team to identify and resolve technical issues, and coordinating the release of sample VERITAS datasets and the first dedicated VERITAS tutorial within the Gammapy package. These efforts have been critical in enabling standardized, end-to-end analyses of VERITAS data using Gammapy. In addition to her software leadership, Samantha has been a strong advocate and organizer for early-career members, serving as the Collaboration’s Early Career Representative since 2025, organizing regular “Debug Den” sessions and coding workshops, and contributing to Collaboration governance through service on the Time Allocation Committee. Her recent long-term on-site stay at FLWO, where she is providing essential technical expertise to support the testing and commissioning upgraded FADCs to conduct optical monitoring on the whole VERITAS field of view, exemplifies her willingness to step beyond formal responsibilities to advance critical technical work that will benefit the Collaboration as a whole.For major contributions to VERITAS during his graduate work, where he pioneered the first implementation of a Gammapy based extended source analysis for VERITAS. This work required the integration of gammapy software into the EventDisplay-based VERITAS analysis pipeline for background estimation, the development and integration of an interpolator for instrument response functions into the VERITAS DL3 converter software, and extensive validations of extended source analysis with a focus on accurate background estimation and systematics.  

Deivid Ribeiro - (Trevor Weekes Award) - For his outstanding technical leadership within the VERITAS and CTAO collaborations, particularly his sustained stewardship of the VEGAS analysis framework and his leadership in advanced analysis and machine-learning development. As a critical member of the VEGAS group, Deivid led the cleanup, restructuring, and roadmapping of the VEGAS codebase, establishing a well-ordered repository and a release path for legacy data products, while implementing and validating major upgrades including the Low Gain Fix, PMT after-pulsing corrections, and BDT-based analysis tools. He maintains the VEGAS Docker images used at NERSC for large-scale production of VERITAS data products, and has led the development and validation of converters enabling DL3-level compatibility with Gammapy and joint analyses between VERITAS and the pSCT using ctapipe. In parallel, Deivid has led the Machine Learning Working Group, developing and testing novel models for gamma–hadron separation and shower image generation, including the first applications of ML methods trained directly on real IACT data. Beyond these highly visible technical achievements, he has been a dedicated mentor and advocate for early-career researchers, leading software workshops, developing shared analysis scripts, updating documentation, and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students at several institutions. His service work, often conducted behind the scenes, has been essential to the Collaboration’s ability to produce reliable, timely, and forward-looking scientific results. 

Congratulations to Sam and Deivid ! 

 Sam Wong     Dr. Deivid Ribeiro