School of Natural Sciences

Three IAS Members in the School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences have received the 2022 ICTP Dirac Medal “for groundbreaking and mathematically rigorous contributions to the understanding of the statistical mechanics of classical and quantum physical systems.”

"In Particle Fever, theorist Nima Arkani-Hamed says on camera, 'I’ve spent the last 15 years thinking about the LHC.' Today, he’s still thinking about collider physics, but from different points of view.

"As Chris Hamilton (Institute for Advanced Study) explains in a recent research article, understanding the current orbits of binary stars in the Milky Way requires separating the effects of nature (the eccentricities that the binary systems are born with) and nurture (the outside gravitational effects of passing stars and the background galactic pull)."

Ahmed Almheiri, past Member (2017–22) in the School of Natural Sciences, has received a 2022 IUPAP Early Career Scientist Award in Particles and Fields “for substantial and impactful contributions to the understanding of black holes and quantum gravity, specifically related to the information paradox and its connection to quantum information theory and quantum error correction.”

James Stone, Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, has been elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors in recognition of advancements in original research. 

Matias Zaldarriaga, Richard Black Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, and Wendy Brown, UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science, have been elected as members of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAA&S), an honor that recognizes accomplishments and leadership in academia, the arts, industry, public policy, and research. 

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.

""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."