Ms. Cecilia Fasano studies the manufacture and implementation of next-generation ultraviolet diffraction gratings for astronomy. A current PhD student at the University of Iowa, she graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a BS in Physics in 2020.

Cecilia was awarded a NASA FINESST (Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology) grant to support her Ph.D. research with Prof. Casey DeRoo & Prof. Keri Hoadley.

In addition to her research, Cecilia is deeply involved in graduate student governance and mentoring. She is a founding member of both the Physics & Astronomy department's Graduate Student Advisory Council (GSAC) and the GradMAP graduate student peer mentoring program.