APS Announces Recipients of the Spring 2023 Prizes and Awards

October 11, 2022

Each year, APS recognizes outstanding achievement in research, education, and public service. This year’s spring award recipients, listed below, were selected from hundreds of nominees from across the physics community. APS congratulates them and applauds their dedication to science. The recipients will be recognized at several APS meetings in 2023, including the March Meeting and the April Meeting.
 

Jürgen Renn received the Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics, which recognizes outstanding scholarly achievements in the history of physics.

He earned the prize “for contributions to the historiography of modern and early modern science, in particular studies of Albert Einstein; and for contributing scholarship and taking public stances that directly raise the social relevance of science historiography.”

Renn is a Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany.
 

Pablo G. Debenedetti received the Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics, which recognizes outstanding achievement in computational physics research.

He earned the prize “for seminal contributions to the science of supercooled liquids and glasses, water, and aqueous solutions, through ground-breaking simulations.”

Debenedetti is the Dean for Research, Class of 1950 Professor in Engineering and Applied Science, and Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University in New Jersey.
 

Demetrios Christodoulides received the Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science, which recognizes outstanding contributions to basic research using lasers to advance our knowledge of the fundamental physical properties of materials and their interaction with light.

He earned the prize “for pioneering several areas in laser sciences, among them the fields of parity-time non-Hermitian optics, accelerating Airy waves and discrete solitons in periodic media.”

Christodoulides is the Pegasus Professor of Optics & Photonics and the Cobb Family Endowed Chair at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
 

Elbio Dagotto received the David Adler Lectureship Award in the Field of Materials Physics, which recognizes an outstanding contributor to the field of materials physics who is notable for high quality research, review articles, and lecturing.

He earned the award “for pioneering work on the theoretical framework of correlated electron systems and describing their importance through elegant written and oral communications.”

Dagotto is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and Distinguished Scientist at the Materials Science and Technology Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
 

Feng Liu received the Davisson-Germer Prize in Atomic or Surface Physics, which recognizes outstanding work in atomic physics or surface physics.

He earned the prize “for elucidating the influence of strain on epitaxy and nanostructure growth, and using these concepts to predict surface-based topological-insulator materials.”

Liu is the Ivan B. Cutler Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
 

Qiuzi Li received the Distinguished Lectureship Award, which recognizes physicists in industrial and other non-academic careers for their significant contributions to the advancement of physics of a technical, industrial, or entrepreneurial nature and for their demonstrated ability to give interesting and engaging lectures to both experts and non-experts.

She earned the award “for discovering innovative concepts utilizing theories of electromagnetics, acoustics, and condensed matter physics to advance technologies for subsurface characterization and non-destructive sensing, combined with a personal dedication to mentoring the next generation of physicists.”

Li is an Advanced Research Associate and Program Leader at ExxonMobil in Annandale, New Jersey.
 

Chandralekha Singh received the Dwight Nicholson Medal for Outreach, which recognizes the humanitarian aspect of physics and physicists created through public lectures and public media, teaching, research, or science related activities.

She earned the medal “for work in broadening access to physics through research into removing barriers to success in the field faced by marginalized groups and how to overcome them, and addressing those challenges directly through meaningful, research-based action.”

Singh is a Distinguished Professor and Director of the Discipline-based Science Education Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh.
 

Xiaoyang Zhu received the Earle K. Plyler Prize for Molecular Spectroscopy & Dynamics, which recognizes notable contributions to the field of molecular spectroscopy and dynamics.

He earned the prize “for seminal research in the spectroscopy and dynamics of molecular condensed materials.”

Zhu is the Howard Family Professor of Nanoscience in the Department of Chemistry at Columbia University in New York.
 

Pierre-Thomas Brun received the Early Career Award for Soft Matter Research, which recognizes outstanding and sustained contributions by an early-career researcher to the soft matter field.

He earned the award “for creative and groundbreaking contributions to make soft functional materials using mechanical and hydrodynamic instabilities, elasticity and flow, from bubble casting for soft robotics to pendant drops coated on the underside of a substrate.”

Brun is an Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University in New Jersey.
 

Carlos R. Ordonez received the Edward A. Bouchet Award, which recognizes a distinguished minority physicist who has made significant contributions to physics research and the advancement of underrepresented minority scientists.

He earned the award “for outstanding and impactful seminal research in different areas of physics and, in parallel, for being a dedicated advocate for advancement in physics in Latin America and in the Hispanic Community in the USA.”

Ordonez is a Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Houston in Texas.
 

Gary T. Horowitz received the biennial Einstein Prize, which recognizes outstanding accomplishments in the field of gravitational physics.

He earned the prize “for fundamental contributions to classical gravity and gravitational aspects of string theory.”

Horowitz is a Professor of Physics at University of California, Santa Barbara.
 

The Partnership for Integrating Computation into Undergraduate Physics (PICUP), American Association of Physics Teachers received the Excellence in Physics Education Award, which recognizes a team, collaboration, or an exceptional individual who has exhibited a sustained commitment to excellence in physics education.

The team earned the award “for developing an active, inclusive, and supportive community of physics educators dedicated to integrating computation into their instruction; creating, reviewing, and disseminating instructional materials; and generating knowledge of computation in physics curricula and of effective practices.”
 

Andrew Geraci received the biennial Francis M. Pipkin Award, which recognizes exceptional research accomplishments by an early-career scientist in the interdisciplinary area of precision measurement and fundamental constants and encourages the wide dissemination of the research results.

He earned the award “for developing new precision measurement techniques to search for weakly coupled interactions of mesoscopic range and demonstrating the precision sensing capability of optically levitated nanoparticles.”

Geraci is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
 

Bruce Remington received the biennial George E. Duvall Shock Compression Science Award, which recognizes contributions to understanding condensed matter and non-linear physics through shock compression.

He earned the award “for pioneering laser-driven high-pressure, solid-state material dynamics in high-energy density regimes.”

Remington is a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
 

Frank Calaprice received the Hans A. Bethe Prize, which recognizes outstanding work in theory, experiment or observation in the areas of astrophysics, nuclear physics, nuclear astrophysics, or closely related fields.

He earned the prize “for pioneering work on large-scale ultra-low-background detectors, specifically Borexino, measuring the complete spectroscopy of solar neutrinos, culminating in observation of CNO neutrinos, thus experimentally proving operation of all the nuclear-energy driving reactions of stellar evolution.”

Calaprice is a Professor Emeritus at Princeton University in New Jersey.
 

Bernhard Mistlberger received the Henry Primakoff Award for Early-Career Particle Physics, which recognizes outstanding contributions made by early-career physicists and helps promote the careers of exceptionally promising physicists.

He earned the award “For groundbreaking contributions to high-precision quantum field theory, including the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the production of Higgs and electroweak vector bosons at hadron colliders.”

Mistlberger is an Associate Scientist at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California.
 

Lai-Sheng Wang received the biennial Herbert P. Broida Prize, which recognizes outstanding experimental advancements in the fields of atomic and molecular spectroscopy or chemical physics.

He earned the prize “for pioneering work in characterizing solution species in the gas phase using high-resolution photoelectron imaging of cryogenically-cooled anions, and outstanding contributions in the investigation of size-selected boron clusters.”

Wang is the Jesse H. And Louisa D. Sharpe Metcalf Professor of Chemistry and Chair of the Department of Chemistry at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
 

Michael Ramsey-Musolf received the Herman Feshbach Prize in Theoretical Nuclear Physics, which recognizes outstanding research in theoretical nuclear physics.

He earned the prize “for seminal contributions in precision electroweak studies of nuclear and hadronic systems, making fundamental symmetry experiments powerful probes of strong interactions and new physics.”

Ramsey-Musolf is a Professor of Physics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Director of the Amherst Center for Fundamental Interactions. He is also the T. D. Lee Professor in the Tsung-Dao Lee Institute at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.
 

Adam Kaufman received the biennial I.I. Rabi Prize in Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, which recognizes outstanding early-career research in atomic, molecular, and optical physics.

He earned the prize “for seminal developments in optical tweezer arrays and clocks based on alkaline earth atoms, with applications to metrology and quantum information processing.”

Kaufman is a Fellow of JILA, a joint institute of the University of Colorado, Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
 

Valeria Molinero received the biennial Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics, which recognizes outstanding interdisciplinary research in chemistry and physics, in the spirit of Irving Langmuir.

She earned the award “for seminal contributions in understanding the crystallization of water and heterogeneous nucleation.”

Molinero is a Distinguished Professor; the Jack and Peg Simons Endowed Professor of Theoretical Chemistry; and the Director of the Henry Eyring Center for Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
 

Heinrich Leutwyler received the J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics, which recognizes outstanding achievement in particle theory.

He earned the prize “for fundamental contributions to the effective field theory of pions at low energies, and for proposing that the gluon is a color octet.”

Leutwyler is a Professor Emeritus in the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Bern in Switzerland.
 

James Hone, Takashi Taniguchi, Emanuel Tutuc, and Kenji Watanabe received the James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials, which recognizes outstanding achievement in the science and application of new materials.

They earned the prize “for seminal contributions to the synthesis and assembly of high quality 2D materials and their heterostructures.”

James Hone is the Wang Fong-Jen Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University in New York. Takashi Taniguchi is a Fellow, Special Assistant to the President and Director of the International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics at the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan. Emanuel Tutuc is a Professor in the Electrical & Computer Engineering department at The University of Texas at Austin. Kenji Watanabe is a Chief Researcher in the Electric and Electronic Materials Field of the Electroceramics Group in the Research Center for Functional Materials at the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan.
 

Vivek Sharma received the John H. Dillon Medal, which recognizes outstanding research accomplishments by early-career polymer physicists who have demonstrated exceptional research promise.

He earned the medal “for fundamental advances toward a molecular-level understanding of non-equilibrium polymer dynamics and for developing methods to accurately measure extensional deformation of polymeric materials and interfacial flows.”

Vivek is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago.
 

James E. Gubernatis received the biennial John Wheatley Award, which recognizes the dedication of physicists who have made contributions to the development of physics across the globe.

He earned the award “for ongoing commitment to developing physics in Africa through initiating the African School on Electronic Structure Methods and Applications and leadership in bringing together African physicists from across the continent to create a Pan-African physics communication vehicle.”

Gubernatis is a Staff Member at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
 

Laura Clarke received the Jonathan F. Reichert and Barbara Wolff-Reichert Award for Excellence in Advanced Laboratory Instruction, which recognizes outstanding achievement in teaching, sustaining (for at least four years), and enhancing an advanced undergraduate laboratory course or courses at U.S. institutions.

She earned the award “for leadership and dedicated efforts in developing sustainable laboratory experiences and courses throughout the entire physics curriculum that address the needs of diverse students who are considering careers in both industry and graduate study.”

Clarke is a Professor in the Department of Physics at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
 

Richard A. Meserve received the Joseph A. Burton Forum Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the public understanding or resolution of issues involving the interface of physics and society.

He earned the award “for outstanding service to science and to the nation in the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear power and in the proper and powerful application of science in important legal matters, and for wise counsel on policy issues involving science.”

Meserve is a President Emeritus of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC.
 

Joel Ullom received the Joseph F. Keithley Award For Advances in Measurement Science, which recognizes physicists who have been instrumental in the development of measurement techniques or equipment that have an impact on the physics community by providing better measurements.

He earned the award “for the development of ultrasensitive multi-pixel transition-edge-sensor calorimeters and spectrometers for applications in astrophysics, nuclear security, materials analysis, and metrology.”

Ullom is the Quantum Sensors Group Leader in the Quantum Electromagnetics Division of the Physical Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
 

Peter Hänggi received the Lars Onsager Prize, which recognizes outstanding research in theoretical statistical physics including the quantum fluids.

He earned the prize “for development of Brownian motors and pioneering contributions to nonequilibrium statistical physics, relativistic and quantum thermodynamics.”

Hänggi is a retired Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Augsburg in Germany.
 

Itamar Procaccia received the Leo P. Kadanoff Prize, which recognizes scientists whose theoretical, experimental, or computational achievements have opened new vistas for statistical and or nonlinear physics.

He earned the prize “for groundbreaking contributions to statistical and nonlinear physics, including the Grassberger-Procaccia algorithm for obtaining the attractor dimension from chaotic time series, and approaches to describe complex multifractals, diffusion-limited aggregation, and polymer drag reduction in turbulent flows.”

Procaccia is The Barbara and Morris L. Levinson Professorial Chair in Chemical Physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.
 

Laura Grego received the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award, which recognizes outstanding accomplishments by physicists in promoting the use of physics for the benefit of society in such areas as the environment, arms control, and science policy.

She earned the award “for significant, influential analyses of critical issues in international security and arms control, especially in the areas of missile defense, space weapons, and space security; for sustained activities educating students, colleagues, policy makers, and the public about these issues.”

Grego is the Research Director and a Senior Scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
 

Adam Dionne and Matthew Cufari received the LeRoy Apker Award, which recognizes outstanding achievements in physics by undergraduate students, and provides encouragement to students who have demonstrated great potential for future scientific accomplishment.

Dionne earned the award “for the development of a novel experimental and theoretical framework to establish a new understanding of nutrient dispersal and transport in Physarum polycephalum.” Cufari earned the award “for verifying the Hills Mechanism as a viable method to generate repeating partial tidal disruption events.”

Dionne was an undergraduate student at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He is currently a graduate student at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Cufari is an undergraduate student at Syracuse University in New York.
 

Prineha Narang received the Maria Goeppert Mayer Award, which recognizes and enhances outstanding achievement by a woman physicist in the early years of her career, and provides opportunities for her to present these achievements to others through public lectures in the spirit of Maria Goeppert Mayer.

She earned the award “for pioneering the development of ab initio computational physics approaches to light-matter coupling and non-equilibrium dynamics and their application to the understanding, prediction and design of quantum materials.”

Narang joined the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry in July 2022 as the Howard Reiss Development Chair.
 

Arup K. Chakraborty received the Max Delbrück Prize in Biological Physics, which recognizes and encourages outstanding achievement in biological physics research.

He earned the prize “for the leading role in initiating the field of computational immunology, aimed at applying approaches from physical sciences and engineering to unravel the mechanistic underpinnings of the adaptive immune response to pathogens, and to harness this understanding to help design vaccines and therapy.”

Chakraborty is a Professor of Chemical Engineering, Physics & Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
 

Eva Andrei received the Mildred Dresselhaus Prize in Nanoscience or Nanomaterials, which recognizes an outstanding scientist in the areas of nanoscience or nanomaterials.

She earned the prize “for experimental exploration of the exotic properties of low-dimensional electron systems, including the discovery of the fractional quantum Hall effect in graphene and the electronic structure of twisted graphene bilayers that led to the field of moiré materials.”

Andrei is the Board of Governors Chaired Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey.
 

Richard G. Kraus received the Neil Ashcroft Early Career Award for Studies of Matter at Extreme High Pressure Conditions, which recognizes outstanding theoretical or experimental contributions by an early-career scientist to studies of matter at extreme high pressure conditions.

He earned the award “for extraordinary achievements and leadership within extreme high-pressure-science, including novel measurements on material properties, laboratory constraints on planetary evolution, creation of complete equations of state, and the future of the programmatic science.”

Kraus is a Senior Research Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
 

Olga Kocharovskaya received the Norman F. Ramsey Prize in Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, and in Precision Tests of Fundamental Laws and Symmetries, which recognizes outstanding accomplishments in the two fields of Norman Ramsey: atomic, molecular, and optical physics; and precision tests of fundamental laws and symmetries.

She earned the prize “for pioneering work in quantum coherence and x-ray quantum optics.”

Kocharovskaya is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at Texas A&M University in College Station.
 

J. C. Seamus Davis and Ali Yazdani received the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize, which recognizes outstanding theoretical or experimental contributions to condensed matter physics.

They earned the prize “for innovative applications of scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy to complex quantum states of matter.”

Davis is a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford in the UK. Yazdani is the Class of 1909 Professor of Physics and Director of the Princeton Center for Complex Materials at Princeton University in New Jersey.
 

Jian Ping Gong received the Polymer Physics Prize, which recognizes outstanding accomplishment and excellence of contributions in polymer physics research.

She earned the prize “for outstanding contributions to the understanding of mechanical and fracture properties of hydrogels based on novel network architectures and for discovering the concept of double network gels based on internal overstressed sacrificial bonds.”

Gong is a Distinguished Professor on the Faculty of Advanced Life Science at Hokkaido University in Japan.
 

Rae Anderson received the Prize for a Faculty Member for Research in an Undergraduate Institution, which recognizes a physicist whose research in an undergraduate setting has achieved wide recognition and contributed significantly to physics and who has contributed substantially to the professional development of undergraduate physics students.

She earned the prize “for outstanding contributions and innovative approaches to fundamental understanding of biopolymer composite dynamics and highly impactful research opportunities and physics training to a diverse set of undergraduate students.”

Anderson is a Professor, Director of the Biophysics Program, and Chair of the Physics and Biophysics Department at the University of San Diego in California.
 

Emanuele Berti received the Richard A. Isaacson Award in Gravitational-Wave Science, which recognizes outstanding contributions in gravitational-wave physics, gravitational-wave astrophysics, and the technologies that enable this science.

He earned the award “for contributions to gravitational-wave science through groundbreaking studies of black hole quasinormal modes, higher multipole radiation, astrophysical detection rates, spin evolution, and tests of general relativity, and for leadership in preparing impactful white papers and review articles.”

Berti is a Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
 

Alexander J. Dragt Sr. received the Robert R. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators, which recognizes and encourages outstanding achievement in the physics of particle accelerators.

He earned the prize "for pioneering contributions to the development and application of Lie methods in accelerator physics and nonlinear dynamics."

Dragt is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics at the University of Maryland in College Park.
 

Nathalie de Leon received the Rolf Landauer and Charles H. Bennett Award in Quantum Computing, which recognizes recent outstanding contributions in quantum information science, especially using quantum effects to perform computational and information-management tasks that would be impossible or infeasible by purely classical means.

She earned the award “for substantial contributions to the field of experimental quantum information science with an emphasis on materials discovery and enhancement, and using materials to enable improved coherence across a wide range of physical platforms for quantum computing, sensing, and communication.”

de Leon is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Associated Faculty in the Princeton Center for Complex Materials at Princeton University in New Jersey.
 

Jen-Chieh Peng received the Tom W. Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics, which recognizes outstanding experimental research in nuclear physics, including the development of a method, technique, or device that significantly contributes to nuclear physics research.

He earned the prize “for pioneering work on studying antiquark distributions in the nucleons and nuclei using the Drell-Yan process as an experimental tool, and for seminal work on elucidating the origins of the flavor asymmetries of light-quark sea in the nucleons.”

Peng is a Research Professor in Nuclear Physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
 

William M. Morse and Bradley Lee Roberts received the W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics, which recognizes outstanding achievements in experimental particle physics.

They earned the prize “for leadership and technical ingenuity in achieving a measurement of the muon anomalous magnetic moment with a precision suitable to probe Standard Model mediated loop diagrams and possible manifestations of new physics, which inspired a vibrant synergy between experimental and theoretical particle physics to determine a comparably precise Standard Model prediction and interpret the implications of a possible discrepancy.”

Morse is a member of the Electronic Detector Group in the Physics Department of Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. Roberts is a Professor in the Department of Physics at Boston University in Massachusetts.