Subject Award · Physical Sciences & Engineering · 2026
The ten finalist universities are the ten highest-ranked on the Physics & Astronomy collaboration index, listed here alphabetically until the full index publishes on 15 September. Each finalist is represented by an academic whose recent work exemplifies why: a real project, drawn from the open scholarly record, cited so you can check it.
The finalists
Dipolar physics: a review of experiments with magnetic quantum gases
Since chromium atoms were first cooled to quantum degeneracy in 2004, experiments with strongly magnetic atoms have opened a distinctive corner of ultracold physics. This review explains what makes the platform unusual, above all the long-range and direction-dependent interactions between magnetic dipoles, and gives a thorough account of what experiments have so far achieved with it.
Two Remarkably Luminous Galaxy Candidates at z ≈ 10-12 Revealed by JWST
Only one galaxy beyond redshift 10 had been spectroscopically confirmed when this search of early JWST imaging revealed two remarkably luminous candidates, GLASS-z12 and GLASS-z10. Their spectral energy distributions show the abrupt breaks expected at redshifts around 12.4 and 10.4, opening a window on the last major uncharted epoch in the history of the universe.
Outside the Safe Operating Space of the Planetary Boundary for Novel Entities
Humanity now makes and releases synthetic chemicals and other geologically novel substances faster than anyone can assess or monitor them. The study argues that this places the planetary boundary for novel entities outside its safe operating space, singles out plastic pollution as a particular concern, and proposes control variables judged against feasibility, relevance and comprehensiveness.
Transparency in the Reporting of Artificial Intelligence - The TITAN Guideline
As artificial intelligence spreads through research and the literature, the need for transparency about its use is clear. The TITAN guideline sets out reporting items covering declaration, purpose and scope, tools and configuration, data safeguards, human oversight, bias, ethics and reproducibility, all confirmed through a Delphi consensus exercise with high participation and designed to evolve as the technology does.
Can the tools of physics illuminate human society? Surveying the field known as social physics, the work brings methods and perspectives from the physical sciences to bear on social phenomena, the product of a review collaboration spanning thirteen countries across Europe and Asia.
Peering back to within 300 million years of the Big Bang, the study combines early JWST imaging with deep ground-based near-infrared data to measure how the galaxy ultraviolet luminosity function evolved between redshifts 8 and 15. It confirms that cosmic star formation continued a gradual, steady decline out to redshift 15, providing details of 61 high-redshift candidates along the way.
How the first supermassive black holes grew is still open, and faint active galaxies in the young Universe are one of the best clues. Searching JWST imaging and slitless spectroscopy from two surveys, the team found twenty broad hydrogen-alpha emitters at redshifts of about four to five, read as accretion onto black holes of ten million to a hundred million solar masses and far more common than extrapolations from bright quasars predict.
Search for an Isotropic Gravitational-wave Background with the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array
Pulsar timing arrays hunt for nanohertz gravitational waves by watching for a common wobble in pulse arrival times across many pulsars at once. Using eighteen years of observations of thirty millisecond pulsars, the study recovers and characterises a common-spectrum noise process, measuring its amplitude and spectral slope, including for the case expected if the signal came from inspiralling supermassive black hole binaries.
Towards higher-dimensional structured light
Structured light means tailoring a light beam in every property it possesses, from its spatial pattern to its behaviour in time. This perspective reviews the methods, difficulties and openings for creating, detecting and controlling several of those degrees of freedom at once, and offers a roadmap towards higher-dimensional structured light with potential for larger-capacity, more secure information processing.
Physics-informed neural networks as surrogate models of hydrodynamic simulators
Flood risk is escalating with climate change, and high-resolution flood simulations remain too computationally expensive for rapid prediction. Combining surrogate modelling with physics-informed machine learning, the study proposes a neural network surrogate for hydrodynamic simulators governed by the Shallow Water Equations, built to perform well in the small-data settings typical of many scientific problems.
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Partners verify their data, feature their academics, and are eligible for the Subject Awards. Finalists are identified from open data; winners are decided by our editorial team and announced on 15 September 2026.
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Snowmass2021 - Letter of interest cosmology intertwined II: The hubble constant tension