Natural Sciences

Seven IAS scholars across all four IAS Schools, including one current Academic Trustee, have won 2022 Guggenheim Fellowships, one of the most remarkable honors for mid-career researchers, artists, and writers. 

Bart Ripperda, incoming Member in the School of Natural Sciences, has been named an Einstein Fellow of the NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP). His proposed project is titled Multiwavelength Flares in the High-Energy Universe.

"Within mathematics, there is a vast and ever expanding web of conjectures, theorems and ideas called the Langlands program. That program links seemingly disconnected subfields. It is such a force that some mathematicians say it—or some aspect of it—belongs in the esteemed ranks of the Millennium Prize Problems, a list of the top open questions in math. Edward Frenkel, a mathematician at the University of California, Berkeley, has even dubbed the Langlands program 'a Grand Unified Theory of Mathematics.'"

Helmer Herman Koppelman, past Member (2020–21) in the School of Natural Sciences, has received a 2022 MERAC Prize from the European Astronomical Society for his work in theoretical astrophysics, an exceptional honor for early-career scholars.

""Don’t let fear of getting sucked into a black hole keep you up at night, says Lia Medeiros, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study; you’d have to get really close for that to happen."

Eight past Members in the School of Mathematics and the School of Natural Sciences are among the recipients of the 2022 Sloan Research Fellowships, a landmark honor for early-career scholars. 

"Natalie Paquette spends her time thinking about how to grow an extra dimension. Start with little circles, scattered across every point in space and time—a curlicue dimension, looped back onto itself. Then shrink those circles down, smaller and smaller, tightening the loop, until a curious transformation occurs: the dimension stops seeming tiny and instead becomes enormous, like when you realize something that looks small and nearby is actually huge and distant."

Professor Emeritus Arnold J. Levine has received a 2021 ASPIRE Award from the Mark Foundation for his work on breast cancer research. Along with past Institute Member Steven Altschuler (1992-93) and Benjamin Greenbaum (2008-13, 2017-21), Levine enters a class of twenty-five researchers who are recognized across cancer research disciplines for their innovative solutions and feasible applications.

A new state of matter, known as quantum spin liquid (QSL), was observed for the first time by IAS and Harvard University researchers. The results were published today in the journal Science in a paper co-authored by Subir Sachdev, Maureen and John Hendricks Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Natural Sciences.

Elliott H. Lieb, current Visitor in the School of Natural Sciences, has received the 2022 American Physical Society Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research, the highest honor granted by the Society.