The American Physical Society recently announced the recipients of its fall 2026 prizes and awards. This cohort includes awards distributed by the society’s division of fluid dynamics, division of nuclear physics, and division of plasma physics. Of the 16 awards, two were presented to women scientists with current faculty appointments at universities in the United States.
Danielle Norcini, assistant professor in the William H. Miller III Department of Physics & Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, received the 2026 Stuart Jay Freedman Award in Experimental Nuclear Physics. The annual award honors an outstanding early career experimentalist in nuclear physics. Dr. Norcini was recognized “for [her] development of novel detection techniques for low energy subatomic particles, and implementing them for the pursuit of new physical phenomena.”
Before joining the Johns Hopkins faculty, Dr. Norcini was a KICP & Grainger Fellow at the University of Chicago. She holds dual bachelor’s degrees in physics and philosophy from Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. from Yale University.
Jessica L. Shaw, assistant research professor of physics at the University of Rochester in New York, received the 2026 Thomas H. Stix Award for Outstanding Early Career Contributions to Plasma Physics Research. Presented annually, the prize recognizes an individual researcher who has made outstanding theoretical, experimental, computational, or technical contributions in plasma physics early in their career. Dr. Shaw was recognized “for [her] experimental demonstration of the Raman amplification of intense, broadband laser light in plasma, and for contributions to applications of laser-wakefield-accelerated electron beams.”
At the University of Rochester, Dr. Shaw also serves as a staff scientist with the Laboratory for Laser Energetics. A graduate of Villanova University in Pennsylvania, with bachelor’s degrees in physics and civil and environmental engineering, Dr. Shaw earned her master’s degree and her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles.