In the News: 2025-2026

Below is a list of our Miller members who have recently received awards or who have been highlighted in the media. Also, the Miller Newsletters is another way to find out what is currently happening in our Miller Community.

  • Markita Landry (Miller Professor 2025-2026) received the 2026 MTI Parkinson’s Therapeutics Award that will allow projects to advance through pre-clinical milestones fast. Landry and her research team will combine regenerative transcription factors with near-infrared nanosensors to rebuild dopamine circuitry and measure neurotransmission in real time, shifting the paradigm beyond dopamine replacement toward circuit restoration.

  • Kelly Nguyen (Miller Fellow 2016-2019) was honored by the 2026 Blavatnik Awards in the UK as Laureate in the Life Sciences category for her research on human telomerase.

  • Alice Shapley (Miller Fellow 2003-2005) recently received the 2026 Dannie Heineman Prize from the American Institute of Physics and American Astronomical Society "for pioneering research into early galaxy formation."

  • Jennifer Doudna (Miller Senior Fellow 2017) was among four UC Berkeley faculty elected to National Academy of Engineering. She was recognized for developing widely adopted DNA and RNA editing methods based on CRISPR-Cas9.

  • Lingfu Zhang (Miller Fellow 2022-2024, Mathematics) named 2026 Sloan Fellow. It is one of the most prestigious awards for early-career researchers.

  • Mohammad Farhat (Miller Fellow 2024-2027) and Eugene Chiang's (Miller Professor 2013, 2025-2026) recent work on tides on molten exoplanets, "Tidal waves of lava may slosh around alien worlds", was featured in a Science news story.

  • Roland Bürgmann (Miller Professor Spring 2014, 2025-2026; Executive Committee 2016-2020) was awarded the 2026 Arthur L. Day Prize and Lectureship from the National Academy of Sciences for "making lasting contributions to the study of the physics of the Earth and whose lectures will provide solid, timely, and useful additions to the knowledge and literature in the field."

  • The American Astronomical Society (AAS) announced the recipients of its 2026 prizes for outstanding achievements in research and education. Anna Ho (Miller Fellow 2020 - 2022) was honored with the 2026 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize, which is awarded for outstanding achievement in observational astronomical research based on measurements of radiation from an astronomical object. Alice Shapley (Miller Fellow 2003-2005) was awarded the Dannie Heineman Prize for outstanding mid-career work in astrophysics that is given jointly by the AAS and the American Institute of Physics.

  • Jonathan Bland-Hawthorn (Visiting Miller Professor 2018) was awarded Honoris doctor causa from Lund University, Sweden (2026) as one of the world’s leading researchers in galactic astrophysics that provided crucial insights into galaxy formation, dwarf galaxies and galactic winds.

  • Ray Jayawardhana (Miller Fellow 2000-2002) was named Caltech's next president, the tenth in the Institute's 105-year history.

  • Wencai Liu (Visiting Miller Professor 2025) was awarded the 2026–2027 AMS Centennial Research Fellowship for the excellence of his research. The AMS Centennial Fellowship Program makes an award annually to an outstanding mathematician to help further their career in research.

  • Hitoshi Murayama (Miller Senior Fellow 2024-2025) has been recognized as the recipient of the American Physical Society’s 2026 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize "for contributions to theoretical and experimental particle physics, as well as inspirational public outreach and effective science advocacy".

  • Omar Yaghi ((Visiting Miller Professor 2009) was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Susumu Kitagawa and Richard Robson! They were awarded "for the development of metal–organic frameworks."

  • Dan Fletcher (Miller Professor 2019-2020) was elected a new member of the National Academy of Medicine. He was recognized for his work developing mobile phone-based microscopy to diagnose infectious diseases in developing countries, and for contributions to the mechanistic understanding of biological self-assembly and mechanotransduction.

  • Three time Miller Professor John Clarke (1975-1976, Fall 1994, Fall 2007) was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis! They were awarded "for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit."

  • William Boos (Miller Professor 2021) co-developed an AI-based weather model that delivered a timely prediction of a stalled monsoon.

  • Iwnetim (Tim) Abate (Miller Fellow 2021 - 2023) was named one of the Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review who is working to develop a steady supply of sustainable energy.

  • The father of metamaterials and ‘invisibility cloak’ pioneer, Sir John Pendry FRS (Visiting Miller Professor Fall 1991), has been awarded the world’s oldest scientific prize, the Royal Society’s Copley Medal. He is recognised for his work on the concept and designs of metamaterials that represent the greatest advance in electromagnetism since Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell.

  • Alison Feder (Miller Fellow 2018-2021) was selected as a 2025 Freeman Hrabwoski Scholar. She is one of the outstanding early career faculty who have the potential to become leaders in their research fields and to create lab environments in which everyone can thrive. She studies evolutionary pathways using clinically derived genomic sequencing data and novel computational methods and models.

  • Jennifer Doudna (Miller Senior Fellow 2017) will receive the 2026 Priestley Medal, the highest honor given out by the American Chemical Society (ACS), annually recognizing distinguished service to chemistry. She received the award for her discoveries on ribozyme function, the Dicer RNase enzyme, double-stranded RNA processing, and CRISPR gene editing, along with her impactful international science leadership.

  • Claire Tomlin (Miller Senior Fellow 2025-present) reflects on her experience as chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) at UC Berkeley over the past four years.

  • Cara Brook (Miller Fellow 2017-2020) was selected as one of the 22 Pew Scholars in the Biomedical Sciences. Pew Biomedical Scholars receive four years of funding to uncover fundamental insights about human health and disease. Cara will design vaccines to immunize wild bats against viruses that can be transmitted to the human population.

  • Andrew Suarez (Miller Fellow 2001-2003) was one of nine new Fellows of the Entomological Society of America for 2025.

  • Yang Yang (Miller Fellow 2021-2024) has been named a 2025 Freeman Hrabowski Scholar by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)—a first for a UCSB faculty member.

  • Neil Shubin (Miller Fellow 1987-1989) was nominated to be next National Academy of Sciences President.