MIT Professor Tracy Slatyer to Receive Jon C. Graff, Ph.D. Prize for Excellence in Science Communication
Awarded to one scientist included in the Science News SN 10, a list spotlighting 10 early- and mid-career scientists on their way to widespread acclaim.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Society for Science today announced that Tracy Slatyer, Ph.D., a theoretical physics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has won the $1,000 Jon C. Graff, Ph.D. Prize for Excellence in Science Communication. Now in its sixth year, the award is given to one scientist included in the Science News SN 10, a list spotlighting 10 early- and mid-career scientists on their way to widespread acclaim. More information about the 2024 SN 10 can be found here.
“Congratulations to Dr. Slatyer,” said Maya Ajmera, President and CEO of Society for Science and Executive Publisher of Science News. “Her work making science more accessible is critical. Effective science communication not only bridges the gap between research and the public but also empowers communities to make better, more informed decisions.”
Slatyer works on particle physics, cosmology and astrophysics and her research is motivated by questions of fundamental particle physics, specifically the nature and interactions of dark matter. She was a co-discoverer of the giant gamma-ray structures known as the “Fermi Bubbles” erupting from the center of the Milky Way.
Slatyer was born in the Solomon Islands and grew up in Australia and Fiji. She received her undergraduate degree in 2005 from the Australian National University. Slatyer conducted her doctoral work in physics at Harvard University in 2010 under the direction of Prof. Douglas Finkbeiner. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. from 2010 through 2013, and joined the MIT Physics Department as a junior faculty member in July 2013. Slatyer was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018 and received tenure in 2019.
Slatyer has received many honors, including being named a Radcliffe Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow. She also won a 2022 Simons Investigator Award and the New Horizons in Physics Prize for Early-Career Achievements in Physics and Math (Breakthrough Prize) in 2021.
The five-member Graff Prize selection committee shared that they were impressed with Slatyer’s “exceptional popular scientific writing on her work in physics, combined with a standout research career.”
In choosing a winner of the Graff Prize, the selection committee considered the scientists’ ability to communicate the long-term value of their work for society, something donor Jon C. Graff, Ph.D. prized in a science communicator. A Science News reader since 1974, Graff was a pioneer in digital cryptography. Graff passed away in January 2021.
