Excellence Across the Board
From undergraduates to distinguished faculty, the Department of Physics and Astronomy has enjoyed a strong showing as the university bestows spring 2026 honors.
At the College of Arts and Sciences annual awards ceremony the department claimed four faculty honors, including research awards at every level.
Professor Christine Nattrass won an Excellence in Teaching Award for Senior Level faculty. Her innovation and leadership in physics education have set her apart as she connects students with research opportunities, internships, and career resources. As director of the undergraduate program, she strives to make sure all students find a place in the department so they can succeed.
Physics faculty members also won three Excellence in Research and Creative Achievement Awards.
A rising star in experimental nuclear physics, Assistant Professor Dien Nguyen was recognized at the Early Career level for her growing list of achievements, including two DOE awards, national laboratory partnerships, and exceptional mentoring.
Professor Jian Liu was honored in the Mid-Career category. A Humboldt Fellow, he has helped burnish the university’s reputation through his work investigating quantum materials for innovative technologies.
Professor Alan Tennant added a Senior Level research and creative achievement award to his long list of distinguished honors. His pioneering research on quantum magnetism and neutron scattering has profoundly advanced our understanding of strongly correlated electron systems. Tennant played a key role in securing National Science Foundation funding for the university’s Center for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing, a Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) where he serves as director.
Earlier this semester Chancellor’s Professor Hanno Weitering was named the 2026 Macebearer, the university’s highest faculty honor.
Outstanding Student Research
While the department celebrated students at the annual Honors Day ceremony, many physics majors also won recognition at the university’s undergraduate research events.
At the Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Symposium (ASUReS):
- Jullian Watts, First Place Award (Mentor: Associate Professor Tova Holmes) for “Optimizing Electron Reconstruction for a 10 TeV Muon Collider”
- Jack Peltier, Second Place Award (Mentor: Math Professor Tuoc Phan) for “On ABP Estimates for a Class of Quasi-linear Elliptic Equations in Divergence Form and Applications”
- Dinesh Gangavarapu, Second Place Award (Mentor: Professor Yuri Efremenko) for “Additive Manufacturing and Geant4 Simulations for Background Reduction in LEGEND-1000”
At the 2026 Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement (EURēCA), three physics majors won achievement awards for their posters:
- Cassidy Fleenor (Mentor: Thomas Chair/CAS Excellence Professor Anthony Mezzacappa) for “Searching for Instability in Core-Collapse Supernovae”
- Amelia Sandoval (Mentor: Assistant Professor Dien Nguyen) for “Polarized 3He via Metastability Exchange Optical Pumping Development”
- Madeleine Sorrell (Mentor: Professor William R. Hix) for “Studying Nucleosynthesis in Three-Dimensional Models of Core-Collapse Supernovae”
Adapted in part from original text by Randall Brown