The following prizes are awarded each year to scientists and students from California, Nevada & Hawaii for the outstanding work performed by their recipients and the groups and institutions they work with.

2019 Post Doctoral Awards:

Charles Kittel Award for Best Theoretical Research

• First place: Arnold JTM Mathijssen (Stanford University)

Luis Alvarez Award for Best Experimental Research

• First place: Omar Moreno (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

2019 Graduate Awards:

Kennedy Reed Award for Best Theoretical Research by a Graduate Student

• First place: Megan Barry (California State University Long Beach)
• Second place: Amandeep Gill (University of Nevada, Reno) and Jaeyeong Lee (California State University, Fresno)

Margaret Burbidge Award for Best Experimental Research by a Graduate Student

• First place: Nicholas Dale (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
• Second place: Maria Simanovskaia (University of California, Berkeley) and Samantha Lewis (University of California, Berkeley)

2019 Undergraduate Awards:

Steven Chu Award for Best Research by an Undergraduate Student

• First place: Kelly Fradet (Santa Clara University)
• Heather Jackson (University of California, Berkeley)

Helen Quinn Award for Education or Undergraduate Research Theory

• First place: Matthew Fox (Harvey Mudd College)
• Spenser Talkington (University of California, Los Angeles)

2019 Poster Awards:

SPS Poster Prize

• Shradda Anand (Stanford University)
• Yoana Guzman (California State University, Chico)

Prize for Best Poster Presentation by a High School Student

• Emily Zhou, The Harker School San Jose
• Arjun Padiyar, Irvington High School Fremont
• William Huang, Lynbrook High School San Jose

2018 Undergraduate Awards:

Steven Chu Award for Undergraduate Research

• First prize: Noraim Nunez (Cal State Dominguez Hills) ($200)
• Second prize: Kassandra A. Weber (Humboldt State University) ($100)

2018 Graduate Awards:

Margaret Burbidge Award for Best Experimental Research

• First prize: Kevin Robles (Cal Poly Pomona) ($400)
• Second prize: Edgard L Bonilla Carrasquel (Stanford University) ($200)

Kennedy Reed Award for Best Theoretical Research

• Mikhael Semaan (UC Davis) and Eric Flynn (Cal State Fullerton) ($300 each)

2018 Poster Awards

Graduate Students:

• Gail A Vinnacombe (UC Los Angeles) and Kristopher K Barr (UC Los Angeles) ($125 each)

Undergraduate:

• Michael Doris (Cal State Chico) and Monika Tadrous (Cal State Fullerton) ($125 each)

2017 Post Doctoral Awards:

Luis Alvarez Award for Best Experimental Research

• First prize: Tie for Yu Zeng (UC Merced) and Natalie Hell (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

2017 Graduate Student Awards:

Margaret Burbidge Award for Best Experimental Research

• First prize: Tie for Shaowei Li (UC Irvine) and Benaz Mendewala (UC Merced)

2017 Undergraduate Awards:

Steven Chu Award for Best Research

• First prize: Sean Haas (Humboldt State University)
• Second prize: Tie for Shoji Hishida (CSU Fresno), Ethan Rinck (CSU East Bay)

Helen Quinn Award for Education or Undergraduate Research

• Tessie Lumabao (Waipahu High School, HI Dept. of Education)

2016 Graduate Student Awards:

Kennedy Reed ($250) award Best Theoretical Research by a graduate student - 1st place

• Justin Smith (University of California, Irvine)
  Title: Systematic method for improving first principle calculations of materials under extreme

Kennedy Reed award ($125) Best Theoretical Research by a graduate student - 2nd place

• Patrick McDougall (Fresno State)
  Title: Particle Production in a Gravitational Wave Background
• Nader Inan (University of California, Merced)
  Title: Interaction of Gravitational Waves with Superconductors

Margaret Burbidge award ($250) Best Experimental Research by a graduate student - 1st place

• Julius De Rojas (University of California, Davis)
  Title: Synthesis of L10 FeNi thin films via High Speed Rapid Thermal Annealing

Margaret Burbidge award ($125) Best Experimental Research by a graduate student - 2nd place

• Kimberly Schultz (University of Nevada, Reno)
  Title: X-ray Characteristics of Mixed Noble Gas Puff Irradiated with the Titan Laser at LLNL

2016 Undergraduate Awards:

Helen Quinn award ($250) Undergraduate Research Theory - 1st place

• Alex Kemnitz (California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo)
  Title: Search for Ternary Fission Events and Analysis With the NIFFTE Time Projection

Helen Quinn award ($125) Undergraduate Research Theory - 2nd place

• Nicholas Sherman (University of California, Davis)
  Title: Calculating Nuclear Magnetic Relaxation (NMR) Rates with Numerical Linked Cluster

Steven Chu award ($250) Undergraduate Research Experiment - 1st place

• Noah Miller (California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo)
  Title: The Fast Interaction Trigger (FIT) Upgrade to the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC

Steven Chu award ($125) Undergraduate Research Experiment - 2nd place

• Omar Cervantes (Hartnell Community College)
  Title: Using Block Co-Polymers to Create a Metal Oxide Hard Mask for Etching Silicon and Silicon Dioxide

2016 Poster Awards:

SPS Poster Award ($125 each)

Best Undergraduate Poster

• Apryl Witherspoon (UNR)
  Title: Experimental Apparatus for Coupling Dielectric Nanospheres to Cold Atoms
• Chris Wong (Cal Polytech)
  Title: The First-Ever High Speed Video Capturing the "Snap" Transition of a Bimetallic Disc

Best Graduate Poster

• Rachel Baarda (UC Davis)
  Title: Reliability Study of Normal Mode Analysis on the BPTI Protein

Past Recipients