News: Awards

The largest neutrino experiment in the United States was named the Project of the Year by the Underground Construction Association for completing a significant and challenging underground construction project with little or no issues.

Prakapenka was selected for developing the GeoSoilEnviroCARS beamline into a hotspot for high-pressure science.

Physicist Clay Córdova has been named a recipient of the 2026 New Horizons in Physics Prize for his work in quantum field theory.
The New Horizons prize, which is given to early-career scientists and mathematicians who have already made a substantial impact on their fields, includes an award of $100,000.

The University of Chicago Data Science Institute faculty, affiliated faculty, and partners win seed funding to advance actionable AI weather forecasting in developing economies in Africa and Asia.

Congratulations to Alexandra Worden, professor of Geophysical Sciences and senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory, who has received a Guggenheim Fellowship. She joins a group of distinguished artists, scientists, and scholars in the 101st class of Guggenheim Fellows honored for “prior career achievement and exceptional promise.”

Back-to-back successes cap a championship run for team “pocpocpoc”, consisting of undergraduates Bach Tran, Hung Pham, and Long Nguyen.
 

Congratulations to Physics alum and grand-prize winner Takumi Matsuzawa, PhD’23, for “Yin and Yang: Harmony in Chaos.” Now in its 5th installment, a PSD science-artist has won grand prize every year, from Physics, Geophysical Sciences, Computer Science, and Chemistry!

Piaulet-Ghorayeb will blend atmospheric observations and theory to reveal the nature of sub-Neptunes, the galaxy's most common worlds.

UChicago scientists team up with Chicago Public Schools to test if robots need fictional personalities to teach effectively.

Congratulations to Vincenzo Vitelli and Carlos E.M. Wagner, who were named 2025 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for their distinguished contributions to the sciences. 

Congratulations to Chemistry alum Di Wang, PhD'25, who has been named a 2026 Schmidt Science Fellow! He aims to improve the production of nanomaterials by overcoming their biological limitations.

Shankar Balasubramanian, the Herchel Smith Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, will receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Science.

Kamionkowski is known for his early work on the possibility that dark matter could be composed of elementary particles and his more recent work on the hypothesis of dark matter being made up of black holes.

Prestigious award, recognizing outstanding contributions by early career researchers, honors physics department alumni Kai Li. 

Fourth-year PhD student Riki Otaki receives the prestigious MongoDB PhD Fellowship for his work making data systems more efficient and scalable.