Tien-Tien Yu, an assistant professor in the department of physics at the University of Oregon, has received the New Horizons in Physics award for her collaborative work with an international research team and their contributions to the field of “light dark matter.” She will split a $100,000 prize with her three collaborators.
The New Horizons prize recognizes early-career scientists who have already made a substantial impact on their fields. Yu and her colleagues have pioneered a new approach in the search for dark matter, the mysterious substance that accounts for about 80 percent of all matter in the universe. Specifically, the team has led the way in the hunt for a class of low-mass dark matter.
“Given the amount of time and effort that has gone into this work, it’s nice to receive this level of recognition,” Dr. Yu said. “However, it is also very humbling to receive such an award as there are many other qualified people who are equally deserving.”
Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Oregon in 2018, Dr. Yu served a fellow in the theoretical physics group at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, and as a postdoctoral associate at the Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook University in New York.