Prizes

I’ve recently won a pretty big prize in theoretical physics, called the New Horizons Prize.  This is a smaller version of the Breakthrough Prize which is awarded to more junior researchers.

My prize is shared with MIT’s Daniel Harlow and Harvard’s Daniel Jafferis, both of them excellent physicists.   Amusingly, each pair of us have written exactly 1 article together (but we have never collaborated as a trio).

I hope it is not too vain to share some news articles about the prize, in case people want to know more:

• Stanford News writes about my physics research that led to the prize.
• The Mercury News writes about my education and religious faith.
• The SF Chronicle: `Oscars of Science’ award goes to Stanford physicist Aron Wall; this journalist seemed most interested in my views about the beginning of time.

There is also going to be a prize ceremony today [i.e. the day I am writing this post], Sunday Nov 4th, in Mountain View.  You can find more information about the broadcasting of the event, and the other prize winners, here.  There will also be an all-day symposium at UC Berkeley this Monday, at which I will be getting the actual trophy and also we will be speaking at a panel on whether time travel is possible.  You can watch it live streamed here.

I’ve also recently received the 2018 Philippe Meyer Prize and the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize [alt link], both of whose award ceremonies will be in the future.

After all this shameless self-promotion, I have some even better news that makes me even prouder: in January Nicole and I are expecting our first child, a son!  We are so pleased by this, and hope that he will find this world hospitable as God’s will is accomplished in his life.  I don’t feel prepared yet to be a father, but then again no one ever is.  I understand that children are very good at training up their parents, so hopefully it will turn out all right!