Merit Award Recipients 2026

Merit Award Recipients 2026

Graduate Student

• Joseph Clement (sPHENIX) for his exceptional support of the sPHENIX data acquisition system, and crucial contributions to the sPHENIX proton-proton jet cross section.
• Skaydi Grossberndt (sPHENIX) for her exceptional contributions to the sPHENIX calorimeter system, both in hardware and software, and for holding the record of the most shifts taken for sPHENIX in Run 25.
• Hanpu Jiang (sPHENIX) for contributions to the construction, commissioning and calibration of the sPHENIX hadronic calorimetry, and for contributions to the sPHENIX proton-proton jet cross section.
• Shuhang Li (sPHENIX) for his comprehensive roles in sPHENIX calorimeter operations and data analysis, and his innovative applications of AI/ML techniques to vastly improve sPHENIX operations, simulations, and reconstruction.
• Andrew Tamis (STAR) for his first measurement of energy-energy correlators in proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions in STAR, his contributions to the ePIC pfRICH, and his leading role in science outreach programs in New Haven, CT.

Postdoctoral Fellows

• Benjamin Kimelman (sPHENIX) for his numerous important ongoing contributions to the sPHENIX TPC calibration, and his commitment to mentoring high school students about EIC physics.
• Gregory Ottino (sPHENIX) for his dedication to the sPHENIX experiment, and for his innovative contributions to the alignment of the sPHENIX tracking system, particularly the combination of cosmic rays and beam data to mitigate weak modes and achieve an alignment precision better than 10µm.
• Ashish Pandav (STAR) for his seminal contribution to the STAR Beam Energy Scan program utilizing proton fluctuation measurements to search for the QCD critical point.

Senior Scientist

• Ashik Ikbal Sheikh (STAR) for his decisive contributions to STAR data quality assurance during the final years of RHIC running and for novel measurements of electromagnetic-field-driven effects in heavy-ion and ultra-peripheral collisions with STAR.