Each year the Gruber Foundation, in collaboration with the International Astronomical Union (IAU), funds a US$75 000 fellowship programme for promising young astronomers. As last year, the Selection Committee decided to award this year's fellowship jointly to three outstanding candidates, each receiving US$25 000. Pooneh Nazari is an Iranian astronomer who will receive her PhD from Leiden University in the Netherlands in 2023. In October 2023 she will join the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany for a Postdoctoral Fellowship. She will use ALMA and JWST data combined with theoretical models to study the relationship between planetary composition and protostellar evolution.

She plans to use the fellowship money to visit collaborators, to organise a workshop, and to offer summer projects to female students from the Middle East.