We proudly recognize members of our community who recently garnered major honors, began new positions and more.

 Faculty and Staff 

• Sarah Eno was chosen as a leader of US Future Higgs Factory effort.
• Jim Gates was named to the board of directors of the Federation of American Scientists and to the Honorary Board of the Society for Science. 
  He received an honorary doctorate of science during Harvard University’s 373rd Commencement. Gates was interviewed on the Les Fridman podcast: Supersymmetry, Strong Theory and Proving Einstein Right.
• Alexey Gorshkov won the 2024 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Photonics Society Quantum Electronics Award. He was also named a finalist in the 2024 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists.2024 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists.
• Amelia (Lia) Hankla received a NASA Hubble Fellowship.  
• Maissam Barkeshli was promoted to the rank of Professor.
• Bill Dorland was quoted in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
• Howard Milchberg was named a Distinguished University Professor.
• Johnpierre Paglione received the CMNS Board of Visitors Distinguished Faculty Award.
• Sasha Philippov received a 2024 Sloan Research Fellowship.
• Aaron Sternbach was quoted in Phys.org.
• Greg Sullivan was named a University of Maryland Distinguished Scholar-Teacher.

Students

• Patrick Banner received a Metropolitan Washington Chapter of Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (MWC/ARCS) Foundation Scholarship.
• Clement Charles received a Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship.
• Patrick Chen received an endowed undergraduate award.
• Sarah Waldych an endowed undergraduate award and sent a video greeting describing her summer at CERN.

Alumni

• Kathryn Sturge, Ariana Shearin and Scott Moroch were selected to join the 73rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.
• James Olthoff (Ph.D., '85) was featured in a NIST blog post.
• Amir Caspi (B.S.), a principal scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, was interviewd by CNN about the 2024 eclipse.
• Paul Cassak, (Ph.D., '06), a professor at WVU, serves as Associate Director of the Center for KINETIC Plasma Physics at NASA.
• Arati Dasgupta (Ph.D., '83),  received the IEEE Plasma Science and Applications Committee Award.
• Bhupel Dev is an associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
• Bryan Dorland (Ph.D., 07) manages space technology in a position at the Department of Defense.
• Fred Angelo Garcia (B.S., '23) received a Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship.
• Rajibul Islam (Ph.D., '12) received the Excellence in Science Teaching Award at the University of Waterloo.
• Chris Najmi (Ph.D., '16) is a physicst at the Applied Physics Lab.
• Jackie Townsend (B.S., Physics) Roman Space Telescope Deputy Project Manager - Goddard Space Flight Center.
• Juan Alejandro Valdivia (Ph.D., '97) has been named a corresponding member of the Chilean Academy of Science
• Ming Wang (Ph.D., '86) was highlighted in a film, Sight, about his breakthroughs in ophthalmology.
• Elijah Willox (Ph.D., '24) joined the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) as a Research Staff Member.

Department News 

• The department hosted Physics Boot camp for the 2024 U.S. Physics Team.
• Maissam Barkeshli, Mohammad Hafezi, Chris Jarzynski, Nicole Yunger Halpern, Bill Phillips, Michael Gullans and Charles Tahan are part of UMD Art-Science Projects to Explore Quantum Creativity.
• UMD President Darryll Pines spoke to quantum leaders at the Quantum World Congress.