Optica, the American Physical Society, and other organizations are among those bestowing honors on University of Rochester faculty.
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University of Rochester faculty regularly earn regional, national, and international awards and honors for their professional contributions to research, scholarship, education, and community engagement.
As part of an ongoing series, we’re spotlighting their accomplishments.
Three faculty members on Clarivate’s list of ‘highly cited researchers’
Robert Boyd, a professor of optics and physics, James Druckman, the Martin Brewer Anderson Professor of Political Science, and Maiken Nedergaard, the codirector of the University’s Center for Translational Neuromedicine, have made it onto Clarivate’s 2025 list of Highly Cited Researchers. It’s an honor that the trio also shared in 2024.
Each selected researcher on the annual list has authored multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1 percent by citations for their field, according to Clarivate. The company is a global provider of analytics, data, and expert services in the areas of academia and government, intellectual property, and life sciences and healthcare.
Boyd is recognized for his pioneering research in nonlinear optical interactions and nonlinear optical properties of materials. Druckman’s research focuses on democracy and political polarization. Nedergaard is an expert on the brain’s unique waste removal system—the glymphatic system, which her team discovered—and sleep’s role in its function.
Thomas Brown elected director at large for Optica’s board of directors
Thomas Brown, director of the Institute of Optics and the Mercer Brugler Distinguished Teaching Professor, has been elected as director at large for the 2026–28 term of the Optica Board of Directors. Optica is dedicated to promoting the generation, application, archiving and dissemination of knowledge in the field. Founded in 1916, it is the leading organization for scientists, engineers, business professionals, students, and others interested in the science of light.
Brown has contributed to the society through service on the editorial board of Optics Express and as program cochair of the Centennial Celebration in 2016.
Suzanne Karan recognized as a top educator
Suzanne Karan, professor and vice chair of education in anesthesiology and perioperative medicine, has received the 2026 Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Award from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
The national honor recognizes program directors who exemplify excellence in teaching, leadership, and a deep commitment to compassionate, learner-focused education. Check out the complete list of awards.
Darren Mueller honored for best historical research
At the Vanguard of Vinyl: A Cultural History of the Long-Playing Record in Jazz by Darren Mueller, an associate professor of musicology at the Eastman School of Music, has been named the winner of the 2025 Award for Excellence in Best Historical Research in Recorded Jazz, given by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections.
The ARSC Awards for Excellence recognize and publicize the very finest research into the history of recorded sound published each year, and to encourage others to emulate those same high standards.
In the book, published in 2024 by Duke University Press, Mueller examines how the advent of the long-playing record (LP) in 1948 revolutionized the recording and production of jazz in the 1950s.
Duncan Moore named Optica Honorary Member
Optica has named Duncan Moore, the Rudolf and Hilda Kingslake Emeritus Professor of Optical Engineering at the Institute of Optics, an Optica Honorary Member. Honorary member is the most distinguished of all Optica member categories and is awarded by a unanimous vote of the Optica board of directors to individuals who have made seminal contributions to the field of optics. Their number is limited to two-thousandths of the society’s total membership. Read more about the honor at the Optica website.
Moore is an expert in gradient-index optics, computer-aided design, and the manufacture of optical systems. He chaired the successful Hubble Independent Optical Review Panel organized in 1990 to determine the correct prescription of the Hubble Space Telescope. He also served as science advisor to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia for a one-year appointment and was confirmed by the US Senate in the fall of 1997 for the position of associate director for technology in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). In this position, he worked with Neal Lane, President Clinton’s science advisor, to advise the president on US technology policy, including the Next Generation Internet, Clean Car Initiative, National Nanotechnology Initiative, ElderTech, and CrimeTech.
Danae Polsin earns early-career award from American Physical Society
Danae Polsin, a staff scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics and an 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 “pioneering experiments mapping the evolution of electronic and ionic structural complexity of alkali metals to terapascal conditions.”
Polsin’s 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.
David Turnbull named American Physical Society Fellow
David Turnbull, a scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, was recently selected as an American Physical Society Fellow. The honor recognizes Turnbull’s pioneering experiments and analysis revealing a fundamental understanding of laser-plasma interactions that have helped advance the fields of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and plasma photonics.
A scientist with a prolific publication record, Turnbull is a significant national player in both the indirect-drive and direct-drive National ICF Programs, and his keen focus on ICF contributed to the achievement of ignition in 2022.
