
Avery is the thirteenth recipient of the Beatrice D. Tremaine Postdoctoral Fellowship. He was selected for the award for his work on the emission and plasma physics of gas in the immediate neighborhood of supermassive black holes, including that at the center of our own Milky Way, Sagittarius A*. Avery showed that very long baseline interferometry or VLBI using current instruments is capable of resolving the black hole horizon, and made quantitative models of the emission signatures of the gas which can be used to test our understanding of black hole physics.
The Tremaine fellowship was established by the father of CITA co-founder Scott Tremaine, Vincent Tremaine, in memory of Beatrice D. Tremaine to honour her lifelong interest in mathematics, science and learning.