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Honours and awards

Many Perimeter Institute researchers have received national and international recognition for their work. Some notable achievements are listed below. Additional honours appear on the curricula vitae of individual researchers — some of which are accessible via links to individual homepages through the People section of this website.

Most notable honours and awards received by Perimeter Institute researchers

  • Perimeter postdoctoral researcher Alessia Platania was named a Distinguished Visitor at Nordita, the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics.
  • Avery Broderick, Associate Faculty and Delaney Family Archibald Wheeler Chair, earned several awards as part of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, including the 2020 Breakthrough Prize; the Einstein Medal, Albert Einstein Society; the Nelson P. Jackson Aerospace Award, National Space Club and Foundation; the 2020 Bruno Rossi Prize, American Astronomical Society; and the American Ingenuity Award in Physical Sciences, Smithsonian Institution.
  • Niayesh Afshordi, Associate Faculty, earned the 2019 Buchalter Cosmology Prize — marking the sixth consecutive year the prize has recognized Perimeter research. 
  • Kevin Costello, Faculty and Krembil William Rowan Hamilton Chair, won the Eisenbud Prize for Mathematical Physics, American Mathematical Society, and was named an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy.
  • Matthew Johnson, Associate Faculty, was part of a collaboration that received a major grant from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council as part of the Quantum Simulators for Fundamental Physics Consortium.
  • Luis Lehner, Faculty Chair, was named to the 2019 TD list of the 10 most influential Hispanic Canadians.
  • Christine Muschik, Associate Faculty, earned a Sloan Research Fellowship for outstanding early-career researchers, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and was named an Azrieli Global Scholar for exceptional early-career researchers, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.
  • Ue-Li Pen, Associate Faculty, received a Humboldt Research Award, Humboldt Foundation, and a Simons Research Award. He also shared in the Governor General’s Innovation Award as part of the CHIME collaboration and in the 2020 Breakthrough Prize as part of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration.
  • Kendrick Smith, Faculty and Daniel Family James Peebles Chair, along with Associate Faculty Ue-Li Pen, Computational Scientist Dustin Lang and other Perimeter researchers, received the Governor General’s Innovation Award as part of the CHIME collaboration. Smith was also awarded the 2020 New Horizons in Physics Prize from the Breakthrough Foundation.
  • Sebastian Steinhaus, postdoctoral researcher, won a prestigious €1 million research grant from the German Research Foundation’s Emmy Noether Programme.
  • Pedro Vieira, Faculty and Clay Riddell Paul Dirac Chair, received a renewal of the Simons Non-Perturbative Bootstrap Collaboration – Large International Group Grant as principal investigator, and the 2020 New Horizons in Physics Prize from the Breakthrough Foundation.
  • Huan Yang, Associate Faculty, received the University of Guelph CEPS Assistant Professor Research Excellence Award.
  • Robert Myers, Director of Perimeter Institute and BMO Financial Group Isaac Newton Chair, was honoured with the 2018 Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Waterloo, presented by the Faculty of Science.
  • Neil Turok, Director Emeritus of Perimeter and Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Niels Bohr Chair, was named an Officer of the Order of Canada (Honorary), presented by the Governor General of Canada. Neil also received the Docteur honoris causa from the Catholic University of Louvain.
  • Faculty member Jaume Gomis was awarded this year’s CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics for his contributions to string theory and strongly coupled gauge theories.
  • Kendrick Smith was co-awarded the Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize of the European Physical Society’s High Energy and Particle Physics Division for his work on the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and Planck experiments. Kendrick was also named a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Fellow in the Gravity and the Extreme Universe program.
  • Avery Broderick received a Diamond Achievement Award from the National Science Foundation (shared with the EHT collaboration).
  • Subir Sachdev, the Cenovus Energy James Clerk Maxwell Chair (Visiting), and Distinguished Visiting Research Chairs Dam Thanh Son and Xiao-Gang Wen, were awarded the 2018 Dirac Medal and Prize from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics.
  • Associate Faculty member Matthew Johnson was awarded a 2018 Buchalter Cosmology Prize.
  • Postdoctoral researcher Davide Racco was awarded a 2018 Buchalter Cosmology Prize.
  • Faculty member Guifre Vidal was named a CIFAR Fellow in the Quantum Information Science program.
  • Associate Faculty member Ben Webster received a Golden Jubilee Research Excellence Award from the University of Waterloo Faculty of Mathematics.
  • Postdoctoral researcher Lena Funcke was the recipient of the 2019 Dieter Rampacher Prize, awarded by the Max Planck Society.
  • Kendrick Smith, the Daniel Family P. James E. Peebles Chair in Theoretical Physics, was co-awarded the 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics as part of the 27-member Wilkinson Microwave Anistropy Probe (WMAP) experiment.
  • Associate Faculty member Raymond Laflamme was named an Officer of the Order of Canada, one of the nation’s highest civilian honours.
  • Subir Sachdev, the Cenovus Energy James Clerk Maxwell Chair in Theoretical Physics (Visiting), was awarded the 2018 Lars Onsager Prize of the American Physical Society.
  • Pedro Vieira, the Clay Riddell Paul Dirac Chair in Theoretical Physics, and Visiting Fellow Zohar Komargodski were awarded the 2018 Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Physics by Tel Aviv University.
  • Kevin Costello, the Krembil William Rowan Hamilton Chair in Theoretical Physics, was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (UK).
  • Distinguished Visiting Research Chairs Charles Bennett and Peter Shor were awarded the 2017 Dirac Medal and Prize of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics.
  • Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Charles Bennett was awarded the 2018 Wolf Prize in Physics.
  • Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Xiao-Gang Wen was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (US).
  • For the fourth consecutive year, Faculty member Robert Myers was recognized as one of the world’s most influential scientists on the “2017 Highly Cited Researchers” list compiled by Clairvate Analytics. Distinguished Visiting Research Chairs Juan Ignacio Cirac and Ashvin Vishwanath also appeared on the list.
  • Neil Turok and former postdoctoral researcher Steffen Gielen were awarded second prize in the 2017 Buchalter Cosmology Prize competition of the American Astronomical Society, while Associate Faculty member Cliff Burgess and Associate PhD student Peter Hayman shared third prize with their collaborators. Perimeter researchers have been honoured in each year the prize has been awarded.
  • Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Duncan Haldane won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics
  • Asimina Arvanitaki, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Aristarchus Chair in Theoretical Physics, and Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Frans Pretorius were each among the winners of the 2017 New Horizons in Physics Prize
  • Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Andrew Strominger won the 2017 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
  • Associate Faculty member Raymond Laflamme was awarded the CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics by the Canadian Association of Physicists and the Centre de recherches mathématiques
  • Kevin Costello, the Krembil William Rowan Hamilton Chair in Theoretical Physics, won the Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical Society
  • Neil Turok, Perimeter Director and Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Niels Bohr Chair, was named an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics
  • Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Xiao-Gang Wen was awarded the 2017 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize of the American Physical Society
  • Neil Turok was awarded the 2017 John Wheatley Award of the American Physical Society
  • Visiting Fellow Simon Caron-Huot won the 2017 Gribov Medal of the European Physical Society
  • Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Nathan Seiberg was awarded the 2016 Dirac Medal of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics
  • Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Sandu Popescu was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (UK)
  • For the third year in a row, Faculty Chair Robert Myers was recognized on the “Highly Cited Researchers” list compiled by Thomson Reuters’ Intellectual Property and Science division (now Clairvate Analytics), while Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Juan Ignacio Cirac made his second straight appearance
  • Postdoctoral researcher Elliot Nelson was awarded second prize in the 2016 Buchalter Cosmology Prize competition of the American Astronomical Society, while Associate Faculty member Cliff Burgess and his colleagues won third prize
  • Associate Faculty member Michele Mosca was awarded the 2017 Fr. Norm Choate Lifetime Achievement Award by St. Jerome’s College at the University of Waterloo
  • Board member Art McDonald won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics
  • Art McDonald won the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
  • Neil Turok, Perimeter Director and Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Niels Bohr Chair, won the 2016 John Torrence Tate Award for International Leadership in Physics from the American Institute of Physics
  • Gluskin Sheff Freeman Dyson Chair Freddy Cachazo was awarded the 2016 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics by the Canadian Association of Physicists and the Centre de recherches mathématiques
  • Associate Faculty member Roger Melko was awarded the 2016 Herzberg Medal by the Canadian Association of Physicists
  • Associate Faculty member Markus Mueller won the 2016 Birkhoff-von Neumann Prize of the International Quantum Structures Association
  • Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Sandu Popescu won the 2016 Dirac Medal in Physics from the Institute of Physics (UK)
  • Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Andrew Strominger received the 2016 Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics from the American Physical Society
  • For the second year in a row, Faculty Chair Robert Myers was named among the “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds,” based on a study by Thomson Reuters, while Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Juan Ignacio Cirac made his first appearance
  • Neil Turok was named the 2016 Gerald Whitrow Lecturer of the Royal Astronomical Society (UK)
  • Subir Sachdev, the Cenovus Energy James Clerk Maxwell Chair (Visiting), was awarded the 2015 Dirac Medal for the Advancement of Theoretical Physics by the University of New South Wales and the Australian Institute of Physics
  • Markus Mueller was appointed to the Canada Research Chair in the Foundations of Physics (Tier 2)
  • Postdoctoral researcher Flavio Mercati and his collaborators were awarded the 2015 Buchalter Cosmology Prize by the American Astronomical Society, while Associate Faculty member Niayesh Afshordi and postdoctoral researcher Elliot Nelson won third prize
  • Associate Faculty member David Cory was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. David was also elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society
  • Distinguished Visiting Research Chairs Abhay Ashtekar and Stephen Hawking were elected as Fellows of the International Society for General Relativity and Gravitation
  • Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Renate Loll was installed as a Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Faculty member Lee Smolin and co-author Roberto Mangabeira Unger won the 2016 PROSE Award from the Association of American Publishers for their book, The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time
  • Postdoctoral researcher Michal Heller was awarded the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
  • Faculty member Asimina Arvanitaki received an Early Researcher Award from Ontario’s Ministry of Research and Innovation
  • Faculty members Philip Schuster and Natalia Toro were awarded a $100,000 New Horizons in Physics Prize by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation
  • Faculty member Pedro Vieira was named a Fellow of the Sloan Foundation. Pedro was also awarded the 2015 Gribov Medal by the European Physical Society
  • Director Neil Turok was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
  • Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Matthew Fisher was awarded the 2015 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize of the American Physical Society
  • Associate Faculty member Avery Broderick was a co-investigator on a National Science Foundation Mid-Scale Innovations Program Grant that was awarded $6.5 million, supporting infrastructure and operations tied to the Event Horizon Telescope experiment
  • Faculty members Philip Schuster and Kendrick Smith and Associate Faculty member Itay Yavin received Early Researcher Awards from Ontario’s Ministry of Research and Innovation
  • Faculty member Lee Smolin and his collaborator, Marina Cortês, were awarded the inaugural Buchalter Cosmology Prize by the American Astronomical Society; Faculty member Luis Lehner and Associate Faculty member Matthew Johnson were along the prize’s third place winners
  • Faculty member Lee Smolin was a third prize winner in the 2015 Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) essay contest on the connection between physics and mathematics; associate postdoctoral researcher Matthew Leifer was a second prize winner
  • Associate Faculty member Cliff Burgess was awarded a CERN Scientific Associate position
  • Faculty member Luis Lehner was named to the Scientific Council of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics – South American Institute for Fundamental Research in Brazil
  • Visiting Fellow Eduardo Martin-Martinez was awarded the 2015 John Charles Polanyi Prize in Physics by the Council of Ontario Universities
  • Postdoctoral fellow David Marsh was awarded a Royal Astronomical Society Research Fellowship
  • Director Neil Turok was awarded an honorary doctorate degree by the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa
  • Director Neil Turok was selected to deliver the 2012 Massey Lectures, which was presented in five cities across Canada, aired nationally on CBC Radio, and published as a book
  • Perimeter Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Nima Arkani-Hamed won a $3 million Fundamental Physics Prize
  • Faculty member Robert Myers won the 2012 CAP-TRIUMF Vogt Medal for Contributions to Subatomic Physics for his outstanding contributions to advancing the frontiers of string theory and its application to theories of gravitation, black holes, and QCD
  • Faculty member Freddy Cachazo won the 2012 CAP Herzberg Medal for deep new insights into the structure of quantum field theory, and the development of elegant mathematical techniques to simplify the analysis of high-energy particle scattering experiments
  • Faculty member Pedro Vieira received a $140,000 Early Researcher Award from Ontario’s Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation for his proposal, “Quantum Field Theory at Finite Coupling”
  • Associate Faculty member Raymond Laflamme was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society for his visionary leadership in the field of quantum information science. Raymond was also named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Senior Postdoctoral Fellow Razvan Gurau was awarded the 2012 Hermann Weyl prize for the discovery and development of the theory of coloured random tensors
  • Postdoctoral Researcher Eugenio Bianchi was awarded a Banting Fellowship to be based at Perimeter
  • Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Yakir Aharonov was awarded the highest honour bestowed on scientists by the United States government, the National Medal of Science, presented by President Barack Obama in November 2010
  • Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Sandu Popescu won the John Stewart Bell Prize for his enormous contributions to the field of quantum mechanics
  • Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Leo Kadanoff was awarded the 2011 Isaac Newton Medal of the Institute of Physics “for inventing conceptual tools that reveal the deep implications of scale invariance on the behaviour of phase transitions and dynamical systems”
  • Faculty member Freddy Cachazo won the 2011 Rutherford Memorial Medal in Physics from the Royal Society of Canada, which honours outstanding research in any branch of physics by younger scientists
  • Faculty member Lee Smolin and Associate Faculty member Richard Cleve were inducted as Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada
  • Associate Faculty member Niayesh Afshordi won the Professor M. K. Vainu Bappu Gold Medal from the Astronomical Society of India (ASI) for his contributions to our understanding of the dark universe
  • Associate Faculty member Luis Lehner was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society for his “important contributions to numerical relativity, most notably in the areas of black hole simulations, general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics, and algorithm development”
  • Associate Faculty member Luis Lehner was named a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Cosmology and Gravitation program
  • Director Neil Turok and Faculty member Lee Smolin were awarded a $2 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to create a new program, The Templeton Frontiers Program at Perimeter Institute
  • Associate Faculty member Luis Lehner was awarded a Discovery Accelerator Supplement (DAS) from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) of $120,000 (2011-14), in addition to a core grant of $280,000 over five years (2011-16)
  • Associate Faculty member Cliff Burgess was awarded an NSERC Discovery Grant of $375,000 (2010-15), within the top tier of awards given to theorists in subatomic physics
  • Associate Faculty member Maxim Pospelov was awarded an NSERC Discovery Grant of $395,000 (2006-11), within the top tier of awards given to theorists in subatomic physics
  • Associate Faculty member Niayesh Afshordi received a $150,000 Early Researcher Award from Ontario’s Ministry of Research and Innovation
  • Director Neil Turok was named to the Science, Technology and Innovation Council (STIC), the Government of Canada’s advisory body on science, technology, and innovation issues
  • Associate Faculty member Cliff Burgess was invited by NSERC to serve on the committee drafting Canada’s national five-year plan for subatomic physics (2012-17)
  • Postdoctoral Researcher Adrienne Erickcek was awarded a CIFAR Junior Fellowship
  • Associate Faculty member Adrian Kent was awarded a Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust for his project, “Mathematical Characterization of Quantum Reality”
  • Associate Faculty member Maxim Pospelov was awarded a Gordon Godfrey Visiting Fellowship at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
  • Associate Faculty member Michele Mosca was named to Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 by The Globe and Mail
  • Faculty member Lee Smolin was awarded a Foundational Questions Research Institute (FQXi) grant for his project, “Physical and cosmological consequences of the hypotheses of the reality of time”
  • Faculty members Lee Smolin and Laurent Freidel, with colleagues, won second prize in the 2011 Gravity Research Foundation essay competition for “Relative Locality: A Deepening of the Relativity Principle”
  • Senior Researcher Christopher Fuchs was selected as the 2011 Clifford Lecturer at Tulane University
  • Postdoctoral Researcher Matthew Johnson was co-awarded an FQXi grant of US$112,331 for “Detecting signatures of eternal inflation using WMAP and Planck data”
  • Senior Postdoctoral Fellow Giulio Chiribella was selected by the American Physical Society as an APS highlight for his paper, “Informational derivation of quantum theory”
  • Associate Faculty member Cliff Burgess was awarded the 2010 Canadian Association of Physicists-Centre de recherches mathématiques (CAP-CRM) Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, the highest honour in theoretical physics in Canada, for his “broad and deep contributions to theoretical physics”
  • PI researcher Christopher Fuchs won the International Quantum Communication Award from the International Conference on Quantum Communication, Measurement and Computation (QCMC) for “outstanding contributions to the theory of quantum communication”
  • Postdoctoral Researcher Zhengfeng Ji and collaborators won the “Best Paper Award” at STOC 2010 for having solved a major open problem in quantum computational complexity
  • Postdoctoral Researcher Giulio Chiribella was awarded the 2010 Hermann Weyl Prize from the International Colloquium for Group-Theoretical Methods in Physics
  • Associate Faculty member Michele Mosca was named a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Fellow in the Quantum Information program, and one of Waterloo Region’s Top 40 Under 40
  • PI Director Neil Turok was named a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Fellow in the Cosmology and Gravitation program
  • Faculty member Jaume Gomis was given an Early Researcher Award from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation
  • Associate Faculty member Niayesh Afshordi was awarded a Discovery Accelerator Supplement from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), one of only eight given nationally in physics
  • Faculty member Fotini Markopoulou was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship (to be held at the Albert Einstein Institute)
  • An NSERC Collaborative Research and Development (CRD) grant of $750,000 over three years was awarded to Associate Faculty member Michele Mosca and partners in Waterloo, Calgary, and Montreal to support research on fundamental and applied quantum key distribution networks
  • A US Army Research Office (ARO) grant of US$600,000 over three years was awarded to Associate Faculty member Richard Cleve and partners, including Associate Faculty members Michele Mosca and Ashwin Nayak, who are developing quantum computing algorithms
  • Parampreet Singh was awarded the 2010 S. Chandrasekhar Award of the International Society on General Relativity in Gravitation 
  • “The Return of the Phoenix Universe” by Director Neil Turok et al. received an Honourable Mention at the 2009 Gravity Research Foundation competition
  • Postdoctoral Researcher Federico Piazza’s paper “The IR-completion of gravity: what happens at Hubble scales?” was named among the “Best of 2009” by the New Journal of Physics
  • “Quark Soup al dente: Applied Superstring Theory” by Robert Myers and S.E. Vasquez and “Are loop quantum cosmos never singular?” by Postdoctoral Researcher Parampreet Singh were both selected among the “Highlights of 2008-2009” by the editorial board of Classical and Quantum Gravity (CQG)