The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) announced that Dean Nadya Mason of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) has been selected to receive the 2025 Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award.
Mason is recognized with the award for outstanding contributions to physics and for effectively communicating those contributions to physics educators. The award will be presented at a Ceremonial Session of the AAPT 2025 Summer Meeting.
Mason was specifically cited “for her outstanding communication to physics educators and wide-ranging impact on students and faculty across the country, particularly those from underrepresented groups in physics, and for her pivotal work in launching the APS National Mentoring Community, and for her work with the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee.”
Mason is an experimental physicist who works at the intersection of complex materials, superconductivity, and nanotechnology, an area relevant to applications involving nanoscale and quantum computing elements. She is particularly recognized for her work elucidating the electronic properties of low-dimensional correlated materials, such as hybrid superconducting devices containing metal, graphene, or topological insulators. She is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Science.
In addition to her teaching and research, Mason’s passion for communicating physics to a wide variety of audiences through public lectures, a TED Talk, on television, and at conferences, her teaching and advising of students, her work on mentoring in the physical sciences and her continuous encouragement of and engagement with students and educators of all backgrounds in physics make her an exemplary choice for this award. Given her research accomplishments in nanoscale systems and her role in the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee, she will receive this award during the Year of Quantum.
Mason achieved her BS in physics at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (1995) and her PhD in physics at Stanford University, Palo Alto CA (2001). She was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, Cambridge MA (2001-2002) and a member of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University (2002-2005).
Her outreach activities encourage more students to go into STEM fields. Her TED Talk, “How to spark your curiosity, scientifically,” has been viewed over 450,000 times. She produced “Magnetic Fields,” a four-part scripted scientific web series, and regularly appeared as a science presenter on WCIA TV Channel 3 in Champaign, Illinois. Mason has been featured on the PBS television productions of “Nova” and “Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World” and in the Science Storms Exhibit at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.