DPF Instrumentation Awards
The DPF Instrumentation Award and DPF Instrumentation Early Career Award are bestowed annually to honor exceptional contributions to instrumentation advancing the field of particle physics through the invention, refinement, or application of instrumentation and detectors. The awards recognize accomplishments in one or more of the following areas:
- Conceptualization and development of unique instrumentation that has made a significant impact on the field.
- Demonstration of the innovative use of instrumentation.
- Stimulation of other researchers to use new techniques and methods.
- Authorship of research papers or books that have had an influential role in the use of instrumentation.
The DPF Instrumentation Award recognizes outstanding achievements in particle physics instrumentation that have had a major impact on the field through the awardee’s dedication over a substantial portion of an entire career, while the DPF Instrumentation Early Career Award recognizes achievements having a significant impact at an early career stage. For the purpose of this award, the early career stage is taken to be approximately 15 years from a Ph.D. or other terminal degree, with due account for interruptions and other factors in nominees’ careers. Award recipients will be invited to present a lecture at the CPAD meeting.
For applications see: https://engage.aps.org/dpf/honors/prizes-awards/instrumentation-award
2023 Awards
DPF Instrumentation Award
Peter Gorham
University of HAWAII
“For their experimental proof and subsequent characterization of radio emission from high-energy particle cascades, the Askaryan Effect, which has been used in searches for the highest energy astrophysical (PeV and EeV) neutrinos. …”
DPF Instrumentation Award
David Saltzberg
University of California – Los Angeles
“For their experimental proof and subsequent characterization of radio emission from high-energy particle cascades, the Askaryan Effect, which has been used in searches for the highest energy astrophysical (PeV and EeV) neutrinos. …“
DPF Instrumentation Early Career Award
Dan Dwyer
LBNL
“For his work on 3D pixelated readout technology for liquid argon time projection chambers (LArPix). This low power, low noise custom ASIC with dynamic i/O, capable of running in liquid argon, has helped open the field to advanced systems on chips. …”
2023 Award Committee: Kim Palladino (Chair), Adam Anderson (Vice-chair), Dan Dwyer, Karri Folan DiPetrillo, Paolo Rumerio, Sally Seidel, Daniel Winklehner, Bo Yu
2022 Awards
DPF Instrumentation Award
Bo Yu
Brookhaven National Lab
“For his definitive contributions to the development of liquid Argon time-projection chambers for neutrino experiments, and for his leadership and creative contributions to the designs of MicroBooNE, ProtoDUNE-SP, SBND, and DUNE. The committee recognized Dr. Yu for his breadth of innovative contributions and essential developments over an extended period.”
DPF Instrumentation Early Career Award
Daniel Winklehner
MIT
“For the development of new accelerator technology enabling an order of magnitude increase in the current delivered from a compact proton cyclotron. This work was carried out using artificial intelligence techniques and has enabled the realization of the IsoDAR experiment that will play a decisive role in the search for sterile neutrinos.”
2022 Award Committee: Andrew White (Chair), Kim Palladino (Vice-chair), Dan Dwyer, Kerstin Perez, Jen Raaf, Paolo Rumerio, Minfang Yeh, Jinlong Zhang
2021 Awards
DPF Instrumentation Award
Minfang Yeh
Brookhaven National Lab
“For his pioneering work in the development and production of high-performance water based liquid scintillators for particle physics experiments, including metal loaded scintillators for rare process experiments. This development has made possible a new generation of large neutrino detectors.”
DPF Instrumentation Early Career Award
Kerstin Perez
MIT/Columbia University
“For the development of novel low-cost, large-area lithium-drifted silicon detectors that open sensitivity to rare low-energy cosmic antinuclei as signatures of dark matter annihilation or decay. These detectors can be used for a broad range of applications.”
2021 Award Committee: Gabriela Carini (Chair), Andrew White (Vice-chair), Juan Estrada, Ulrich Heintz, Jennifer Raaf, Paolo Rumerio, Lindley Winslow, Jinlong Zhang
2020 Awards
DPF Instrumentation Award
Juan Estrada
Fermilab
“For his creation and development of novel applications for CCD technology that probe wide-ranging areas of particle physics including cosmology, dark matter, neutrino detection and quantum imaging.”
DPF Instrumentation Early Career Award
Lindley Winslow
MIT
“For her development of the ABRACADABRA detector: a powerful new search tool for axions, a broad class of well-motivated dark matter (DM) candidates.”
2020 Award Committee: Roger Rusack (Chair), Gabriela Carini (Vice-chair), Sunil Golwala, Ulrich Heintz, Ana Amelia Machado, Ettore Segreto, Hanguo Wang
2019 Awards
DPF Instrumentation Award
Hanguo Wang
University of California – Los Angeles
“For his seminal contributions to and sustained development of the use of liquid xenon and argon detectors for direct detection searches for dark matter, …”
DPF Instrumentation Early Career Award
Ana Amelia Machado
University of Campinas in Brazil
“For the invention and development of the ARAPUCA photon detector…”
DPF Instrumentation Early Career Award
Ettore Segreto
University of Campinas in Brazil
“For the invention and development of the ARAPUCA photon detector…”
2019 Award Committee: Rick Van Berg (Chair), Roger Rusack (Vice-Chair), Hong Ma, Sunil Golwala, Rinaldo Santonico, Javier Tiffenberg
2018 Awards
DPF Instrumentation Award
Rinaldo Santonico
The University of Rome, Tor Vergata
“For the development of large gap Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) and their successful application in a wide variety of experiments.”
DPF Instrumentation Early Career Award
Dr. Javier Tiffenberg
Fermilab and the University of Chicago
“For the development of the Skipper CCD and its application in light dark matter and coherent neutrino-nucleus interaction searches.”
2018 Award Committee: Petra Merkel (Chair), Rick Van Berg (Vice-chair), Hong Ma, Tim Nelson, Blair Ratcliff, Abe Seiden, Larry Sulak
2017 Awards
Blair Ratcliff
SLAC
Lawrence Sulak
Boston University
“For the development of novel detectors exploiting the Cherenkov radiation to enhance the capabilities of frontier experiments devoted to the study of beauty and charm hadrons and atmospheric neutrinos.”
2017 Award Committee: Marina Artuso (Chair), Petra Merkel (Vice-chair), Hong Ma, Stephen Holland, Tim Nelson, Abe Seiden, Gary Varner
2016 Awards
Stephen Holland
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Gary Varner
University of Hawaii
“For the development of technologies for detection of signals in frontier experiments, especially the fully depleted charge coupled device and the ‘oscilloscope on a chip’ integrated circuit.”
2016 Award Committee: Sally Seidel (Chair) DPF, Marina Artuso (Vice-chair) CPAD, Karsten Heeger, David Nygren, Veljko Radeka, Graham Smith
2015 Awards
David Nygren
University of Texas-Austin
Veljko Radeka
University of Hawaii
“For widespread contributions and leadership in the development of new detector technologies and low-noise electronics instrumentation in particle physics as well as other fields, and in particular work leading to the development and instrumentation of large volume liquid argon time projection chambers that are now a key element in the global particle physics program.”
2015 Award Committee: Howard Nicholson (Chair) CPAD, Sally Seidel (Vice-chair) DPF, Marina Artuso CPAD, Karsten Heeger DPF, Graham Smith CPAD
Graduate Instrumentation Research Award (GIRA)
The GIRA program aims to encourage and facilitate greater involvement of physics graduate students in significant instrumentation development, to boost recognition of instrumentation work as a vital part of PhD training, to foster the growth of future HEP instrumentation experts in the US, and to strengthen university-lab ties on instrumentation development. GIRA has been established by the Coordination Panel for Advanced Detectors (CPAD), a standing committee of The Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society.
The proposal must be for a graduate student to conduct research on high energy physics instrumentation, to be carried out mainly in the US at a university or at one of the following national labs: ANL, BNL, FNAL, LANL, LBNL, LLNL, ORNL, PNNL or SLAC. The applicant must name a faculty or staff mentor. Even if the work is not to be carried out at one of the labs, the project should include a staff partner from one of these labs. This may or may not be the same person as the mentor.
For applications see: https://cpad-dpf.org/?page_id=285
2023 GIRA Award
Winners
Karen Navarro
University of Texas, Arlington
“A Qubit Inspired Ion Sensor for Barium Tagging in Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay Searches”
Yu-Han Tseng
Yale University
“Development of Quantum Optomechanical Sensors for Dark Matter and Sterile Neutrino Searches”
Runner-ups
Majd Ghrear
University of Hawaii
“First Definitive Demonstration of Electron Counting in Three Dimensions”
Josef Sorenson
University of New Mexico
“Co-design of Sensors and Electronics for 4D Trackers”
2023 Award Committee: Noah Kurinsky (Chair), Scott Hertel, Samantha Lewis, Ralph Massarczyk, Kerstin Perez
2022 GIRA Award
Winners
Elizabeth Tilly
University of New Mexico
“Development of a Negative Ion Gas TPC to Observe the Migdal Effect”
Edgar Marrufo
University of Chicago
“Skipper CCDs for Dark Matter Measurements with Cosmic Surveys”
Runner-ups
Xiaochen Ni
University of Washington
“Development of a CMOS Charge Sensing Pixel Array for the Selena Neutrino Experiment“
ELizabeth van Assendelft
Stanford University
“Radio-frequency Quantum Upconverters for dc-VHF Quantum Metrology”
2022 Award Committee: Andrea Pocar (Chair), Angela Fava, Bo Jayatilaka, Noah Kurinsky, Marcelle Soares-Santos, Lindley Winslow
2021 GIRA Award
Winners
Karia Dibert
University of Chicago
“MKID Development for Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background”
Yuzhan Zhao
University of California – Santa Cruz
“Development of Deep Junction Low Gain Avalanche Diodes (DJ-LGAD) for high Granularity Timing Detector”
Runner-ups
Thomas Braine
University of Washington
“Superconducting Radio Frequency (SRF) Cavities for ADMX“
Erin Healy
Princeton University
“Microwave-Multiplexed High-Density Detector Modules for Cosmic Microwave Background Instruments”
2021 Award Committee: Bjoern Penning (Chair), Daniel Bowring, Julieta Gruszko, Elisabetta Pianori, Andrea Pocar
2020 GIRA Award
Winner
Matthew Bressler
Drexel University
“Construction and Commissioning of a 10 kg Scintillating Argon Bubble Chamber for GeV Dark Matter and Reactor CEνNS.”
Runner-ups
Ako Jamil
Yale University
“Development of a Low Radioactive Large Area SiPM Array for Ton-scale 0νββ.”
Osmond Wen
Caltech
“Fabrication, development, and deployment of phonon-mediated low-mass dark matter detectors using superconducting kinetic inductance sensors.”
2020 Award Committee: Jonathan Asaadi (Chair), Carl Haber, David Moore, Jennifer Raaf
2019 GIRA Award
Winners
Xinran Li
Princeton University
“High resolution selenium imaging detector for neutrinoless ββ decay.”
Yiou Zhang
Brown University
“Development of magnetic tunnel junction sensor array for detection of axion condensate – novel physics of dark matter.”
Runner-ups
Tanner Kaptanoglu
University of Pennsylvania
“Dichroic Winston Cones for large scintillator or water-based liquid scintillator detectors.”
Austin McDonald
University of Texas-Arlington
“Development of Barium Tagging: A Background Free Method to Search for Majorana Neutrinos.”
2019 Award Committee: Roxanne Guenette (Chair), Marina Artuso, Jonathan Asaadi, Dan McKinsey
2018 GIRA Award
Winner
Vetri Velan
University of California Berkeley
“Measurement of Light and Heat Signal Yields in Superfluid 4He With Calorimetric Readout”
Runner-ups
Carolyn Gee
University of California-Santa Cruz
“Applications of Low Gain Avalanche Detectors: 4-Dimensional Tracking with Ultra-Fast Silicon Detectors.”
Peter Madigan
Caltech
“Comprehensive characterization and optimization of the LArPix sensor.”
Dylan Temples
Northwestern University
“Improving low-mass reach of xenon TPC dark matter searches by doping with light noble elements.”
FAQ
Qing Xia
Yale University
“Developing high-bandwidth digital data transmission for next-generation 0υββ detections.”