UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) Dean Nadya Mason today received one of the nation’s top honors for physics education.
The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) conference today in Washington, D.C., presented Mason the 2025 Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award. Presented every year since 1941, the Richtmyer award “recognizes those who have made outstanding contributions to physics and their communication to physics educators.”
“It is so important for us to share our science with the world – to educate, inspire, and help build pipelines. In order to have impact and maintain support, we need to communicate well with both other scientists and the general public,” Mason said. “It’s such an honor to receive an award that recognizes the value of how we communicate science.”
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, leadership, and research at UChicago PME, Mason has shared her passion for physics to a wide variety of audiences through public lectures, a TED Talk on sparking scientific curiosity, a web series she produced in partnership with the Illinois Materials Research Center, and through appearances on television, in children’s books, and at conferences.
Given her research accomplishments in nanoscale systems and her role in the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee, she was presented the award during the United Nations’ International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.
As part of the award, she will present the annual Richtmyer Memorial Lecture. Her talk will be entitled “Graphene Nanoelectronics.”
“Everything we do at UChicago PME is focused on making an impact on the world’s most pressing problems,” Mason said. “That includes both the science we do and the way we share that science with the world.”