Previous Nathan Sugarman Awards

2024 Nathan Sugarman Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate and Graduate Research

Undergraduate Student

Tate Flicker
“For her contributions to the ATLAS Pixel Detector and Tile Calorimeter upgrades ahead of the High Luminosity LHC, and her efforts towards demonstrating the physics potential of a future muon collider.”
– Karri DiPetrillo

EFI Director Ed Blucher with Tate Flicker

Graduate Students

Paul Chichura
“For creative and innovative research that has expanded the scope of science carried out with the 10-meter South Pole Telescope.”
– John Carlstrom and Thomas Crawford

EFI Director Ed Blucher with Paul Chichura

Amanda Farah
“For fundamental contributions to gravitational-wave astrophysics, including elucidating the mass distribution of binary black holes in the universe.”
– Daniel Holz

EFI Director Ed Blucher with Amanda Farah

2023 Nathan Sugarman Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate and Graduate Research

Undergraduate Students

Kepler Domurat-Sousa and Cameron Poe
“For their ground-breaking work as a team developing Compton-based Time-of-Flight Positron-Emission Tomography cameras capable of reducing the radiation dose to patients by factors up to 1000.  Possible new applications include pediatric diagnosis, routing oncological screening, and dynamic movies.”
– Henry Frisch

Graduate Students

Wen Han Chiu
“For his outstanding work in exploring new physics scenarios of the dark matter and dark sector, and connecting them to signals at the LHC searches and cosmological observations.”
– Liantao Wang

Nina Coyle
“For her outstanding work exploring modifications of the Higgs couplings as well as the emergence of alignment in the Higgs sector, and for her research on the impact of neutrino nucleus interaction modeling on new physics searches.”
– Carlos Wagner

2022 Nathan Sugarman Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate and Graduate Research

Undergraduate Students

Zihni Baykara
“For contributions to an improved understanding of duality and exceptional symmetry und laboratory of Modane, France. In
structures in string theory.”
– Jeffrey Harvey

Macallan Maedke
“For developing firmware algorithms using high-level synthesis for real-time data processing in the ATLAS Global Event Processor at the High Luminosity LHC."
– David W. Miller

Graduate Students

Kaeli Hughes
“For leading the lowest threshold ultra-high energy neutrino search to date, with data from the Askaryan Radio Array, and her efforts toward the development of future radio
detectors for ultra-high energy neutrinos.”
– Abigail Vieregg

Rostom Mbarek
“For fundamental contributions in developing a self-consistent theory for the origin and the propagation of high-energy cosmic rays and neutrinos.”
– Damiano Caprioli

Undergraduate Student
Keir Adams

For his groundbreaking computational astrochemistry, which led him to a solution of the decades-old spectroscopic mystery of the Red Rectangle nebulae and organic molecules
- Takeshi Oka

Graduate Student
Philip Mansfield

For substantial research contributions to our understanding of properties and clustering of dark matter halos forming in Cold Dark Matter scenario, as well as exemplary efforts in education, outreach, and mentoring high- school and undergraduate students
-Andrey Kravtsov

Graduate Student
Karthik Ramanathan

For his contributions to the development of the DAMIC experiment and novel analysis methods to search for light dark matter particles.
-Paolo Privitera

Undergraduate Student
Adel Rahman

For his work on the structure of black hole horizons and the definition and characterization of a 'memory effect' for black holes
- Robert Wald

Graduate Student
Evan Angelico

For his deep and broad contributions to the development of picosecond time-of-flight measurements of neutrinos, charged particles, and photons in nuclear and particle physics
-Henry Frisch

Undergraduate Student
Dae Heun Koh

“For his contributions to experimental particle physics and to theoretical accelerator physics, in particular for his development of analytic solutions to equations that arise from moving particles with wakefields in accelerator cavities.”

Graduate Student
Patrick Bryant

“For his work in measuring the Higgs boson pair production cross section and his contributions to the new system of track reconstruction electronics for the ATLAS trigger.”

Graduate Student
Zoheyr Doctor

“For his contributions to LIGO's recent discoveries of merging black holes and merging neutron stars, including the use of DECam to perform follow-up observations to identify electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational-wave sources and developing machine-learning techniques to facilitate gravitational-wave data analysis.”

Undergraduate Student
Steven Giacalone

“For his work on interpreting the spatial eccentricity distribution of close-in exoplanets, and the origin of isolated hot Earths, in the context of the high- eccentricity planet migration scenario.”

Undergraduate Student
Jonathan Sorce

“For his work in providing a general proof that when all second order effects on mass are properly taken into account, black holes cannot be over-charged or over-spun by adding matter to them.”

Graduate Student
Travis Maxfield

“For his work exploring the implications of supersymmetry in flat and curved space-times.”

Graduate Student
Giordon Stark

“For his technical contributions and creative insights in the design and prototyping of a new high-speed electronics trigger system for Lorentz- boosted massive particles for the ATLAS Experiment.”

Undergraduate Student
Andrew Stier

“For extraordinary contributions to the design and construction of the high- resolution camera for CTA’s Schwarzschild-Couder telescope.”

Graduate Student
Reto Trappitsch

“For pioneering measurements of iron and nickel isotopes in presolar silicon carbide gains, which constrain models of stellar nucleosynthesis and galactic chemical evolution.”

Undergraduate Student
Jessica Avva

“For her contributions to experimental ultra-high energy neutrino astrophysics, particularly for her leading role on the measurement of the radio attenuation length of ice at Summit Station, Greenland and the development of a prototype radio phased array.”

Graduate Student
Hsin-Yu Chen

“For her contributions to gravitational wave astrophysics, and in particular, for her research in the field of multi-messenger astronomy and the electromagnetic follow-up of gravitational wave sources.”

Graduate Student
Benedikt Diemer

“For the innovative contribution to our understanding of the origin and properties of density profiles of dark matter halos.”

Undergraduate Student
Jane Huang

For her in-depth analysis of λ5797, the Rosetta Stone of diffuse interstellar bands

Undergraduate Student
Samantha Dixon

For her outstanding work in the calibration set-up for the DAMIC dark matter experiment, and in the measurement of radioactive contamination of the CCD detectors

Graduate Student
Vinicius Miranda

For his thorough and careful work in elucidating the effect of inflationary features on cosmic microwave background anisotropy and non-Gaussianity

Graduate Student
Eric Oberla

For his pioneering work on high-bandwidth waveform sampling and on a new type of detector: the Optical Time-Projection Chamber

Undergraduate Student
Zihao Jiang

“For his outstanding work in analyzing spectra of unidentified diffuse interstellar bands and setting up full pipeline reductions for a valuable archive of relevant spectra.”

Graduate Student
Matthew Becker

“For developing a novel algorithm of computing distortions of galaxy images using data from cosmological simulations, which significantly advances our ability to make realistic theoretical predictions for upcoming wide area surveys aiming to map matter distribution in the universe on large scales.”

Graduate Student
Samuel Meehan

“For his contributions to the ATLAS experiment at CERN in developing techniques to measure ZZ production with hadronic final states.”

Graduate Student
Stephen Green

“For the analysis of the effects on cosmological dynamics of nonlinear phenomena occurring on scales small compared with the Hubble radius.”

Graduate Student
Anton Kapliy

“For his work on developing an advanced electronics system for the trigger of the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.”

Graduate Student
Christopher Meyer

“For his work on the measurement of the dijet cross section using the ATLAS detector at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.”

Graduate Student
Samuel Gralia

For his contributions to our understanding of the motion of small bodies and black holes in general relativity, taking into account the forces that these bodies exert upon themselves.

Graduate Student
Imai Jen-La Plante

For the first measurement at the Large Hadron Collider of the production of W-bosons in association with quarks and gluons.

Undergraduate Student
Sean Johnson

For his leading role in thoroughly exploring the properties of a probable new class of extragalactic sources.

Graduate Student
Alison Brizius

For her considerable contributions to the QUIET experiment measuring the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background, in particular for her role in the integration of both the 44 GHz and 90 GHz receivers in laboratories in the US and at the site in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

Graduate Student
Ryan Keisler

For ground-breaking studies of the fine angular scale anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background using the South Pole Telescope.

Graduate Student
Ibrahim Sulai

For the study of exotic phenomena in the helium atoms and nuclei using laser trapping and spectroscopy.

Graduate Student
Jock McOrist

For his studies of world-sheet quantum corrections in the heterotic string.

Undergraduate Student
Jesse Duncan Marshall

For his contributions to the TRACER program, and his studies of the galactic propagation of high-energy cosmic rays.

Graduate Student
Martina Hurwitz

For work to study the quark/gluon scattering cross section and angular distribution in a new energy regime.

Graduate Student
Larry Kirby

For his studies of a collapsing molecular cloud, including the development of hardware, software, and observing techniques for submillimeter polarimetry.

Graduate Student
Vasileios Paschalidis

For development of a novel parabolization approach for stable integration of 3+1 formulations of Einstein's equations.

Undergraduate Student
Bihui Li

For undergraduate research with Professor Yau Wah in which she improved the world limit on the probability of KL???? by more than a factor of ten.

Graduate Student
Jahred Adelman

For his studies of the mass of the top quark, including the development of hardware to identify final states with displaced vertices.

Graduate Student
Alexander Paramonov

For his development of fast electronics for the Collider Detector at Fermilab, and his studies of rare top decays and anomalous gauge boson production.

Graduate Student
Douglas Rudd

For the development of new computational tools providing a factor of ten improvement in the precision of astrophysical simulations and for using these tools to study the influence of baryons on the distribution of matter in the universe.

Graduate Student
Fang Peng

For studies in theoretical astrophysics of thermonuclear burning on neutron stars and of mechanisms associated with gamma ray bursts.

Graduate Student
Daniel Robbins

For studies in string theory, especially of a matrix model for the null-brane.

Graduate Student
Eduardo Rozo

For the study of issues related to gravitational lensing.

Graduate Student
Timothy Donaghy

For outstanding contributions to the HETE-2 mission that improved the accuracy and speed of GRB localizations and for analysis and modeling of GRB data that have provided significant constraints on the structure of GRB jets.

Graduate Student
David Morrissey

For outstanding research in the penomenology of particle physics, in particular his study of a minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model, which showed that these models can induce a first-order electro-weak phase transition and accommodate a dark matter candidate.

Graduate Student
Argyro Tasitsiomi

For outstanding research in cosmology, in particular her investigations of the possible observable signatures of dark matter in the Milky Way, the dark matter halos of galaxy clusters, and Lyman alpha emission from high-redshift galaxies.

Graduate Student
David Sahaykan

For innovative research in theoretical particle physics and string theory, in particular the study of string propagation near defects, and the analysis of strongly coupled supersymmetric gauge theories at long distances

Graduate Student
Francesco Spano

For the measurement of the mass of the W boson using the full data sample of the OPAL experiment, thereby determining a fundamental constant and strengthening the predictive power of the electroweak theory

Graduate Student
John Everett

For the development of a comprehensive model for the outflow of material from the disks of active galactic nuclei and for helping to unify the understanding of these objects

Graduate Student
Florian Gahbauer

For creative and dedicated work in preparing the TRACER cosmic ray detector and for using this instrument for the measurement of the flux of heavy cosmic ray nuclei to energies of several Tev/nucleon

Graduate Student
John Kovac

For the invention and development of acromatic waveguide polarizers for the DASI telescope and for using this instrument to perform the first detection of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation

Graduate Student
C. Michael Lindsay

For the development of a highly automated ion spectrometer of remarkable sensitivity and for using this tool for new observations of the infrared spectrum of the H3+ ion and related systems

Graduate Student
Valmiki Prassad

For his contributions to the observation of direct CP violation in the neutral K-meson system and for making this difficult measurement a compelling one

Graduate Student
Jeffrey Berryhill

For innovative and careful probes of high energy proton-antiproton collisions, looking for new processes involving the production of the photon in association with the W and Z gauge bosons

Graduate Student
Asantha Cooray

For exceptional breadth in contributions to cosmology and, in particular, the study of higher order effects in the cosmic microwave background and the large-scale structure of the universe

Graduate Student
Nils Halverson

For outsanding contributions to the design, construction and deployment of the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer, and for leading the analysis effort to extract a definitive measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background angular power spectrum

Graduate Student
Benjamin McCall

For his major role in the observational studies of H+3 which plays the central role in interstellar chemistry. The observations have led to the surprising discovery of abundant H+3 in the diffuse interstellar medium

Graduate Student
Robin L. Coxe

For outstanding work in measuring the mass of the W boson and thereby increasing the predictive power of the electroweak theory

Graduate Student
Scott M. Oser

For excellence in experimental astrophysics as demonstrated by essential contributions to the design, development, and operation of the Solar Tower Atmospheric Cerenkov Effect Experiment (STACEE) and the first analysis of 100 GeV gamma rays from Crab Nebula and Pulsar

Graduate Student
Daniel E. Reichart

For outstanding research in high energy astrophysics, in particular for his discovery of direct evidence linking gamma-ray bursts and supernovae, and his work showing that gamma-ray bursts may be a powerful probe of the very high redshift universe

Graduate Student
Constance M. Rockosi

For outstanding graduate research in the area of astronomical imaging, for design, construction, deployment and observing with a five-color, wide-field CCD camera, used to discover the coolest stellar objects known, the most distant objects known and the shape and content of the Galactic halo

Graduate Student
Gregory E. Graham

For outstanding work in the design, prototyping, construction, and commission of a large-scale Transition Radiation Detector which performed among the best in the world. And for his excellent work in the pursuit of CP-violating kaon decays.

Graduate Student
James Andrew Hocker

For innovative contributions in the field of High Energy Physics on the OPAL experiment at LEP. In particular, for his development of b-quark and tau-lepton identification methods which have greatly improved our ability to search for the Higgs boson

Graduate Student
Gordon T. Richards

For observational work that challenges a critical, fundamental assumption in astrophysics, that absorption lines in quasi-stellar objects are primarily intergalactic, and presents a fascinating alternative.

Graduate Student
Vatche V. Sahakian

For the construction of the phase diagram of supersymmetric gauge theory in a torus geometry using black hole thermodynamics.

Graduate Student
Joseph W. Fowler

For outstanding graduate research in experimental astrophysics,in particular for the design, construction, and implementation of a large array of atmospheric Cherenkov detectors to determine the composition of cosmic ray particles at ultrahigh energies.

Graduate Student
Konstantin L. Gavrilov

For outstanding graduate research in experimental materials science, in particular for elucidating, by high resolution secondary ion imaging, the mechanism by which alumina ceramics become HF-corrosion-resistant through co-doping with silica and magnesia.

Graduate Student
David A. Toback

For detailed and systematic searches for physics beyond the Standard Model in final states involving vector gauge bosons.

Graduate Student
Alexander G. Abanov

For outstanding graduate research in theoretical condensed matter physics, in particular for his seminal analysis of topological phenomena and off-diagonal order in electronic liquids and his study of the multifractal character of the spectrum of Bloch electrons in an incommensurate magnetic field.

Graduate Student
Peter S. Shawhan

For outstanding graduate research in experimental elementary particle physics, in particular for his clever and elegant contributions to the detector and physics analysis for a precise study of CP violation."

Graduate Student
Daniel E. Vanden Berk

For outstanding work in observational cosmology, in particular in leadership in the development of direct determination of the clustering of matter on the largest scales yet achievable, overlapping with the epoch of galaxy formation.

Graduate Student
Mark Chun

For outstanding pioneering work in adaptive optics, in particular for the design development and programming of the very high speed processor which is the brains of the system.

Graduate Student
Craig Copi

For outstanding research in theoretical cosmology, in particular for developing the stochastic models of galactic evolution that added significantly to the robustness of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis.

Graduate Student
Eric Torbet

For exemplary work in experimental astrophysics, in particular for his leading role in the design, construction and implementation of the most sensitive instrument ever developed for measuring high energy positrons in cosmic rays.

Graduate Student
Roy A. Briere

For outstanding graduate research in experimental high energy physics and phenomenology, in particular for his precise tests of CPT symmetry and for his elucidation of the regeneration process.

Graduate Student
Charles Darren Dowell

For outstanding graduate research in photometry and polarimetry at far-infrared wavelengths, in particular for characterizing the thermal emission from interstellar clouds.

Graduate Student
David A. Schleuning

For outstanding research on the magnetic fields of giant molecular clouds, in particular for determining the configuration of the field in the Orion Nebula.

Graduate Student
Brian Fields

For outstanding graduate research in theoretical astrophysics, in particular for his research on the significance of beryllium and boron in Population II stars.

Graduate Student
Munir Humayun

For outstanding graduate research in cosmochemistry, in particular for his study of the isotopic chemistry of potassium in the early Solar System.

Graduate Student
David Saltzberg

For outstanding graduate research in high energy physics, in particular for his leading role in the CDF experiment's direct measurement of the mass of the W boson.

Graduate Student
Corbin Covault

For outstanding postdoctoral research in experimental astrophysics, in particular for his leadership role in the physical interpretation and analysis of data collected from the most sensitive air shower array ever constructed for gamma ray astronomy.

Graduate Student
Kevin McFarland

For outstanding graduate research in experimental high energy physics, in particular, his contributions to the clarification of the difficult issue of unitarity in neutral p‚on decay by a new measurement technique.

Graduate Student
Timothy McKay

For exemplary work in experimental astrophysics, in particular for his leading role in the construction and implementation of the most sensitive air shower array for gamma ray astronomy.

Graduate Student
Lawrence Gibbons

For exemplary work in experimental elementary particle physics, in particular for exceptional contributions to the most precise determination of the parameters of CP violation.

Graduate Student
Joseph R. Dwyer

For exemplary work in particle astrophysics, in particular for his crucial contributions to design, construction, and balloon flight of an instrument with unprecedented sensitivity in the determination of cosmic ray energy spectra.