Awards and Fellowships
APS Awards
The Robert R. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators is awarded to Jie Wei, for seminal contributions in the physics of high-intensity hadron accelerators, and for leadership in the development, construction, and commissioning of the world's highest power hadron accelerators, particularly the first continuous-wave superconducting linac for heavy ions above 200 MeV/nucleon.
The Ernest Courant Outstanding Paper Recognition is awarded to Rachel A. Margraf, James P. MacArthur, Gabriel Marcus, Heinz-Dieter Nuhn, Alberto Lutman, Aliaksei Halavanau, Zhen Zhang, and Zhirong Huang for their paper “Microbunch rotation in an x-ray free-electron laser using a first-order achromatic bend,” published in the 27th issue of Physical Review Accelerators and Beams.
The Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Beam Physics Award is given to Xiujie Deng, for the theoretical development of the steady-state microbunching technique, and a first experimental demonstration of its mechanism, paving the way for future facilities with high average flux and high power. Please learn more about Dr. Deng here.
William Barletta, Speaker of the APS Council, has recently announced that the APS Council approved the Helen Edwards Award! The APS DPB Helen Edwards Award is established to recognize outstanding technical contributions and profound leadership in the development, construction and commissioning of leading particle accelerator facilities. One award will be presented annually consisting of a $5,000 stipend, a reimbursement of up to 2,000 for travel to an APS meeting at which the prize is to be awarded along with a certificate citing the contributions made by the recipient. Mid-career nominees are especially encouraged and nominations will be open in January 2026.
New APS DPB Fellows
By Sandra Biedron (Element Aero and the Center for Bright Beams), 2025 APS DPB Fellowship Committee Chair, and Delia Cruz (APS), APS Senior Honors Program Coordinator
As described in the APS Constitution, "…there shall be elected to Fellowship only such Members who have contributed to the advancement of physics by independent, original research or who have rendered some other special service to the cause of the sciences."
For 2025, we wish to extend congratulations to our three distinguished APS DPB colleagues in their recognition as Fellows of our Society: Mark A. Palmer of Brookhaven National Laboratory, Jeroen van Tilborg of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Sang-Ho Kim of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Please find the citations and biographies of our esteemed colleagues below. We hope that you will join us in congratulating our colleagues in person at the APS Global Summit in March of 2026 in Denver, Colorado.
Mark A. Palmer
Citation: For outstanding leadership and technical contributions, including driving the MICE experiment to the successful demonstration of ionization cooling, that have brought the design and development of muon colliders closer to their practical realization.
Mark Palmer is a physicist with extensive experience in accelerator science and technology. He serves as the Chair of the Accelerator Science & Technology Department and the Director of the Accelerator Facilities Division at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Mark oversees advanced particle accelerator and laser technologies while facilitating a range of research and development. Prior to joining BNL, he was director of the U.S. Muon Accelerator Program at Fermilab where he coordinated efforts to develop the technologies required for a neutrino factory and a high-energy muon collider. Prior to Fermilab, he worked at Cornell where he was co-leader of the damping ring design team for the International Linear Collider, co-convener of the CLIC-ILC Damping Rings Joint Working Group, project director for the CESR Test Accelerator (CESR-TA), and supported the Cornell Electron Storage Ring. Before focusing on accelerators, he worked as a particle physicist with the CLEO collaboration.
Jeroen van Tilborg
Citation: For pioneering work on compact laser-plasma accelerators, advancing innovative high-resolution diagnostics, and for the creation of novel particle and light sources empowered by plasma accelerator technology.
Jeroen van Tilborg is a senior scientist in the BELLA Center at LBNL. His research interests cover ultra-intense laser physics, laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs), free-electron laser (FEL) physics, high-energy particle physics, plasma diagnostics, advanced electron transport, and novel radiation sources. In 2021, he became a Deputy Director at BELLA (experiments). Jeroen received his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands) for work performed at LBNL. APS-DPB recognized his work through the 2006 outstanding thesis award. In 2016 he was awarded an ECRP grant to advance compact LPA-based FELs. His more recent work includes the development of active plasma lenses, 10-GeV acceleration in cm-scale plasma structures, and compact active muon sources.
Sang-Ho Kim
Citation: For visionary leadership and technical excellence in the development of the world’s first high-power hadron superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) linear accelerator, mentoring the next generation of experts, and guiding the design and operation of related machines.
Sang-ho Kim earned his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from Seoul National University in 1999, specializing in accelerator and fusion devices. He joined the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory the same year and now leads the teams responsible for the SNS front end, accelerating structures, SRF and RF systems, power systems, cryogenics, and vacuum systems, as well as related test facilities and R&D programs. Over two decades, he has played key roles in the design, commissioning, and upgrade of SNS accelerator systems. He has authored over 100 publications and received the 2025 USPAS Prize for Achievement in Accelerator Science and Technology.
We wish to thank the members of the APS DPB Fellowship Committee - Stephen Gourlay of Fermilab, S. Alex Bogacz of JLAB, Agostino Marinelli of SLAC, Daniela Leitner of LBNL, and John Jowett of GSI Darmstadt for their continued service to their Society.
Finally, as all APS members are invited to nominate deserving colleagues as potential Fellows of the APS, we also welcome you to prepare nomination packets for your deserving colleagues in the future submission cycles for this APS honor. To have your nomination considered for the 2026 cycle, which opens on January 1, 2026, please submit the nomination package by June 2, 2026. You can find the guidelines and submission information at this address: https://www.aps.org/funding-recognition/aps-fellowship/dpb-fellowship. If you have any questions, please reach out to Delia at honors@aps.org.
DPB Student Travel Awards
US Particle Accelerator School Student Travel Awards
Patrizia Azzi, INFN Padova on behalf of the DPB Education and Outreach Committee
Recipients of DPB travel funds at the Summer 2025 USPAS in Rohnert Park, California
Since 2019, the DPB has provided a scholarship program for both domestic and international students attending the US Particle Accelerator School (USPAS). This travel grant is aimed at advancing the education of newcomers in the broad spectrum of Beam Physics. The APS DPB Executive Committee and the Education, Outreach, and Diversity Committee actively promote and implement this program.
14 travel awards were granted for Summer 2025 and 13 for the Winter 2026 sessions. These accomplished students represent a diverse array of backgrounds, contributing to the program's richness and inclusivity. For more details of the program, please refer to https://uspas.fnal.gov/dpbscholarshipdetails.pdf.
IPAC’25 Student Poster Awards
Two students were recognized for their quality of work and presentation, as evaluated during the IPAC’25 student poster session. Winners received an award of USD$500. The poster titles and abstracts for the winners are listed below:
Sito, Leonardo, for his poster “Metamaterial absorbers for beam-coupling impedance mitigation”
Charged particle bunches traversing cavity-like discontinuities in the beam pipe at relativistic velocities excite electromagnetic resonant modes that can detrimentally affect the dynamics of trailing bunches. This beam-cavity interaction, characterized in the frequency domain through the concept of beam-coupling impedance, poses significant challenges for beam stability and performance in high-energy particle accelerators. While conventional mitigation strategies encompass higher-order mode (HOM) couplers and lossy ferrite insertions, novel approaches leveraging metamaterial properties offer promising alternatives for selective mode damping. This investigation explores advanced metamaterial-based structures designed to specifically target and attenuate higher-order modes, thereby selectively reducing the beam-coupling impedance resonances.
Bingol, Baris, for his poster, “LWFA-driven photonuclear and photo-spallation reactions for the production of medical radionuclides 67Cu and 225Ac”
Recent results of production of the medical radionuclides 67Cu, 225Ac using a laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA) are presented. This emerging technique utilizes powerful, ultrashort laser pulses that are focused into a gas jet to create a plasma wake that traps and accelerates electrons to very high energies with large accelerating gradients. Accelerated electrons interact with high-Z material to produce high-energy photons by bremsstrahlung, which then produce 67Cu via the 68Zn(γ, p)67Cu photonuclear reaction and 225Ac via photo-spallation of 232Th. 67Cu, with 62 h half-life, is considered ideal radioisotope for treatment of lymphoma and colon cancer.225Ac, with 9.92-day half life and four alpha emissions per decay, is ideal for targeted alpha therapy, especially localized prostate cancer.* We present the experimental setup, maximising electron pulse intensity by optimising laser beam properties and target composition of gas jet. The gamma beam and the design of 68Zn and 232Th target are optimised using FLUKA simulations. We will also report on the development of detectors for online monitoring of the electron and gamma beams, and produced activities of the radionuclides.
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