Mary Becker, part of the incoming graduate student class, was awarded the Sterling Prize Fellowship. Becker graduated in May 2026 with dual degrees in Physics, with a Modern Optics specialty, and Psychology, with an emphasis in Neuroscience at San Diego State University. Carving out a non-traditional path to academia, Becker will be pursuing research at the intersection of these fields with Yale faculty focused on the study of neurophysics. After working as a lifeguard and an EMT for the City of San Diego, she began conducting research in the Behura Lab at SDSU studying photonic qubit development and pursued atomic magnetometry with the Hollberg Lab at Stanford. She has acted as both the President of Women in Physics and the Society of Physics Students at SDSU and will continue to foster community building and support. She is an NIH-NIGMS MARC and Cal-Bridge Scholar where she has demonstrated her academic excellence and commitment to research. In her free time, she is a marathon swimmer and a drowning prevention advocate.
About winning the Fellowship, Becker commented, “Receiving the Sterling Prize Fellowship is an incredibly humbling milestone. To have my work recognized in such a way is a sincere validation of the long hours spent exploring the complexities of the physical world. Being welcomed into this legacy of excellence at such a prestigious institution inspires me to push the boundaries of research even further. I am truly moved to be part of a community that fosters such high levels of academic rigor while investing so sincerely in the next generation of scientists.”
David Moore, Director of Graduate Admissions (DGA) and associate professor of physics, commented, “We are very excited to have Mary joining us at Yale this fall. The Sterling prize recognizes Mary’s broad range of research experience already to date, which she will bring to her graduate work at the intersection of physics and neuroscience. This is a very exciting area, bringing together tools from several fields, and we are looking forward to seeing her research continue here at Yale.”
The Sterling Prize Fellowship is a prestigious internal graduate award given by the Department of Physics at Yale University to its top doctoral candidates, recognizing their exceptional academic accomplishments and promise for future achievement.