News: Awards

Congratulations to Caroline Piaulet-Ghorayeb and Donald Stull, who have been named recipients of the 2025–2026 Suzuki Postdoctoral Fellowship Award. Yuji Suzuki, SM’70, a longtime supporter and former Council member of the Physical Sciences Division, established the Yuji and Lorraine Suzuki Postdoctoral Research Fund in 2016 to recognize outstanding postdoctoral researchers.

Currently a postdoctoral researcher at JILA, Kai Li received his PhD in physics in 2023 under the mentorship of Professor Linda Young. Li has been awarded the 2026 EuXFEL Young Scientist Award, which aims to recognize outstanding contributions to research at the European X-ray Free Electron Laser by young researchers in the early stages of their career. We interviewed him about his research and his time at UChicago.

In December, undergraduate Ranya Sharma was honored with a 2025 CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award—one of the highest recognitions for early-career computing research in North America. The award, presented by the Computing Research Association, acknowledges Ranya’s standout contributions to understanding how digital infrastructure shapes privacy, performance, and equity across the Internet.

Congratulations to Carlos Kenig, who has won a King Faisal Prize for helping to revolutionize the understanding of nonlinear partial differential equations.

Thirty-two members of the University of Chicago faculty, including five from the Physical Sciences Division, have received distinguished service professorships or named professorships, effective Jan. 1.

Recommendations from UChicago award winners, including CS alum Polly Ren, SB’25, College Undergraduate Student Prize in Undergraduate Teaching winner.

Congratulations to Michael Rust, who has been selected as a 2025 Innovation Fund Investigator.

In 2025, the Physical Sciences Division at the University of Chicago continued its enduring legacy of scientific discovery, translating innovation into bold impact in service of a better world. We’re thrilled to share a few of our proudest achievements.

University of Chicago students Logan Hanssler and Elijah Jenkins, both fourth-years in the College, have been selected as 2026 Marshall Scholars. Each will be provided the opportunity to study in their chosen fields for two years at any university in the United Kingdom. Logan Hanssler (Astrophysics; Molecular Engineering) intends to study Optics and Photonics at Imperial College London and pursue a degree by research in Physics at Durham University.

Sixth annual workshop celebrates and supports early-career data scientists.

The PEERING testbed, created by UChicago Professor Nick Feamster and colleagues, received the Test of Time Award at the 2025 ACM Internet Measurement Conference.

Yu Deng will share the 2026 Leonard Eisenbud Prize for Mathematics and Physics for his fundamental contributions to the theory of dispersive PDE and, in particular, to a new understanding of wave kinetic equations.

Six University of Chicago Physical Sciences Division scientists were named in Web of Science's 2025 report of highly cited researchers. According to Web of Science, researchers on the list have demonstrated significant and broad influence in their fields.
 

Pioneering cosmologist honored for landmark measurements of the Hubble Constant.

Congrats to J. Peter May, who received the 2026 AMS Elias M. Stein Mentoring Award for exceptional mentoring.