Indian American physicist Surjeet Rajendran wins $100,000 Breakthrough Prize

The prize is also known as the ‘Oscars of Science’.

Indian American physicist Surjeet Rajendran is among the recipients of the $25 million ‘Breakthrough Prizes’, which is dubbed as the ‘Oscars of Science’, and awarded annually to physicists, life sciences researchers and mathematicians.

This year’s Breakthrough Prize ceremony was held in Silicon Valley, and hosted by Morgan Freeman. It was attended by among others, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, President of Alphabet Sergey Brin and other top CEOs of the Valley.

The award ceremony also featured performances by Alicia Keys, actors Vin Diesel and Sienna Miller. Astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly and (yep) Will.i.am were also present at the ceremony.

Laureates received $3 million each in prize sponsored by Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang. The winners of this year were selected by a committee of previous laureates.

According to the foundation’s official website, the Breakthrough Prize awards are “the largest individual monetary prize[s] in science.”

Breakthrough Foundation announced that a total of seven prizes were awarded this year to 9 individuals, along with a $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, which was split between three founders and more than a thousand members of the LIGO team.

It also says three $100,000 New Horizons in Physics Prizes were awarded to six early-career physicists, including Rajendran, and a further three $100,000 New Horizons in Mathematics Prizes were awarded to four young mathematicians.

Unlike last year, this time two winners of the Breakthrough Junior Challenge were announced, each receiving up to $400,000 in educational prizes for them, their teacher and their school.

Since its inception in 2012, the Breakthrough Prize has awarded close to $200 million to honor paradigm-shifting research in the fields of fundamental physics, life sciences, and mathematics.

“There has never been a more important time to support science,” said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. “The 2017 Breakthrough Prize laureates represent the leaders in scientific research in physics, math and life sciences. Their breakthroughs will unlock new possibilities and help make the world a better place for everyone.”

Surjeet Rajendran graduated from Caltech in 2004 with a degree in mathematics and subsequently pursued a Ph. D. in Physics from Stanford (graduated 2009). He was the Madansky postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins and is presently the Henry Shenker Professor of Physics. He joined the UC Berkeley Physics Department in July 2014.

He has broad interests in theoretical physics with a strong focus on physics beyond the standard model.

“While the standard model of particle physics has repeatedly withstood many experimental tests, it leaves many questions unanswered. These questions include the nature of dark matter, the origins of the electroweak scale and the cosmological constant as well as the quantum nature of gravity. While there have been many theoretical attempts to answer these questions, they have not been empirically verified,” he writes on his home page at Berkeley.

Details of this year’s winners:

 

• Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Awarded to Stephen J. Elledge, Harry F. Noller, Roeland Nusse, Yoshinori Ohsumi, and Huda Yahya Zoghbi

• Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics Awarded to Joseph Polchinski, Andrew Strominger, and Cumrun Vafa

• Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics Awarded to Jean Bourgain

• New Horizons in Physics Prize awarded to Asimina Arvanitaki, Peter W. Graham, and Surjeet Rajendran; Simone Giombi and Xi Yin; and Frans Pretorius

• New Horizons in Mathematics Prize awarded to Mohammed Abouzaid, Hugo Duminil-Copin, and Benjamin Elias and Geordie Williamson

• Second Annual, International Breakthrough Junior Challenge Won by Female Students Antonella Masini, 18 (Peru) and Deanna See, 17 (Singapore)

• 2016 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, awarded in May to founders and team members of LIGO, awarded to Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss and family of Ronald Drever.