LLE is pleased to announce that Danae Polsin, LLE Staff Scientist and URochester Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has received the American Physical Society’s 2026 Neil Ashcroft Early Career Award for Studies of Matter at Extreme High-Pressure Conditions. The award cites Polsin’s work “For pioneering experiments mapping the evolution of electronic and ionic structural complexity of alkali metals to terapascal conditions.”
Polsin is an outstanding scientist whose work pushes the boundaries of several new high-energy-density science directions, including extreme quantum matter, laboratory astrophysics and planetary physics, high strain-rate response of materials, optical properties of extreme matter, and the structure of matter at atomic pressures. She has over 11 invited talks and 30 publications in prestigious journals such as Physical Review Letters, Nature Communications, and the Journal of Applied Physics. In addition, she has been awarded resources for multiple proposals, either as the principal investigator or co-principal investigator, at the National Ignition Facility, the Linac Coherent Light Source at SLAC, and the European X-Ray Free Electron Laser Facility.
A dedicated mentor, Polsin is also gifted in engaging and inspiring others. She has advised several students, currently teaches a graduate course on characterization methods in materials science, and actively contributes to various initiatives at LLE. Danae epitomizes the best and brightest of LLE’s scientific workforce. Congratulations, Danae!