Gorshkov Named Finalist for 2024 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists

Alexey Gorshkov, a senior investigator in the NSF Grand Leap Challenge Institute for Robust Quantum Simulation, is a finalist in the physical sciences and engineering category of the 2024 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. The annual awards acknowledge the accomplishments and future potential of scientists and engineers who are 42 years old or younger.

“This award is a great honor,” says Gorshkov, who is also a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a Fellow in the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) and a Fellow in the Joint Center for Quantum information and Computer Science. “The research that led to it would not have happened without my brilliant collaborators, especially students and postdocs, and my wonderful colleagues. I am immensely grateful to all of them.”

This year, the Blavatnik National Awards received 331 nominations from 172 institutions. A laureate and five finalists were selected in each of the three disciplinary categories of life sciences, physical sciences and engineering, and chemical sciences.

Gorshkov came to the University of Maryland in 2013, where he leads a theoretical research group that explores a range of physics topics encompassing quantum optics, atomic and molecular physics, quantum information science and condensed matter physics. Using the tools and concepts from these areas, his group has provided extensive insights into the behaviors of interacting quantum systems and has helped develop quantum technologies, including sensors, precise clocks, quantum communication devices, and small quantum computers. These devices harness quantum behaviors by controlling the interactions of light, atoms and molecules.

The awards are sponsored by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences. The 2024 finalists and laureates will be honored at a gala on October 1, 2024. Each laureate will be awarded $250,000 in unrestricted funds, and Gorshkov and the other finalists will each receive $15,000. This is the first year that the finalists are receiving a monetary award.

“On behalf of the Blavatnik Family Foundation, I congratulate this year’s outstanding Laureates and Finalists for their exceptional research,” says Len Blavatnik, founder of Access Industries and the Blavatnik Family Foundation and a member of the President’s Council of The New York Academy of Sciences. “They are among the preeminent leaders of the next generation of scientific innovation and discovery.”

—Story by Bailey Bedford, JQI communications group