May 18, 2026
Annually, the Physics Department selects students based on faculty nominations and academic achievement for the Howard L. Schultz Prize, awarded by the Physics Department, and the DeForest Pioneers Prize, awarded by the Yale Office of the Secretary. Congratulations to the class of 2026 prize winners!
HOWARD L. SCHULTZ (1977). Howard L. Schultz, Ph.D. 1937. Awarded to outstanding seniors in the Physics department.
- Simon Britton*+ B.S. Chemistry (Intensive) and Physics double major. Advisor: Nir Navon. Senior project: Exactly Solvable Dephasing Models for a 1D Noninteracting Fermi Gas
- Lilia Chatalbasheva B.S. Physics (Intensive) and Economics double majo; member of Wright Labr. Advisor: Laura Havener. Senior project: Thermal Model of the Underlying Event Background in Heavy-Ion Collisions for Jet Analyses
- Christian Kang*+ B.S. Physics (Intensive) major. Advisor: Peter Rakich. Senior project: Non-classical phonon states in cavity optomechanical systems
- June Lee*+ B.S. Mathematics (BS/MS Program) and Physics (Intensive) double major. Advisor: Witold Skiba. Senior project: Half-Filled Landau Lowest Levels on the Fuzzy Sphere
- Nina Liu*+ B.S. Physics (Intensive) and Computer Science double major. Advisor: Malena Rice. Senior project: Hot-Jupiter-Hosting Binary Systems are Preferentially Eccentric
- George Ploumis*+ B.S. Engineering Science-Mechanical and Physics (Intensive) double major. Advisor: Sarah Demers. Senior project: Exploring a lower muon threshold for Higgs→ττ triggers in a search for Charge-Parity Violation
- Nicolas Wyszkowski*+ B.S. Physics (Intensive) and Mathematics double major. Advisor: Hui Cao. Senior project: Emission and Dynamics in Systems with Nonlinear Exceptional Point Degeneracies
- Asa Xiao* B.S. Mathematics & Physics major. Advisor: Ian Moult. Senior project: Bootstrapping Collider Physics (also won the Bishop Berkeley Prize)
- Iffat Zarif*+ B.S. Physics (Intensive) double major. Advisor: Sarah Demers. Senior project: Development of a Photon Filter for the Mu2e Experiment
- Daniel Zhang*+ B.S. Physics (Intensive) major, with a Quantum Science & Engineering certificate. Advisor: Aleksander Kubica. Senior project: Smallest Magic State Distillation Protocol
DEFOREST PIONEERS (1960). Board of Directors of DeForest Pioneers, Inc., in honor of the outstanding scientific achievements of Lee DeForest, Ph.B. 1896. For a senior physics major for distinguished creative achievement in physics.
- Mason Abrell*+ B.S. Physics (Intensive) and Global Affairs double major. Advisor: Hong Tang. Senior project: Quantum Laser Across The Sound: Building Up A Lab (received the Joseph Lentilhon Selden Memorial Award in 2025)
- Zachary Zitzewitz*+ B.S. Physics (Intensive) and Mathematics double major, with a Quantum Science & Engineering certificate. Advisor: Logan Wright. Senior project: Towards Hyperscale Computing with Optical Neural Interconnects (received an NSF GRFP Fellowship)
*indicates distinction in the major
+ indicates induction into Sigma Pi Sigma