Daniel Harlow awarded Packard Foundation Fellowship

Physics professor receives one of the most prestigious nongovernmental awards for early-career scientists.

Sandi Miller | Department of Physics
October 20, 2020

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation has announced that Daniel Harlow, assistant professor of physics and a researcher at the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics, has been named a Packard Fellow for Science and Engineering. The Packard Foundation Fellowships are one of the most prestigious and well-funded non-governmental awards for early-career scientists.

Each year, the foundation invites 50 university presidents to nominate two early-career professors each from their institutions; from those 100 nominees, an advisory panel of distinguished scientists and engineers select the fellows, who receive individual grants of $875,000 over five years. The 2020 class comprises 20 fellows. 

“Daniel Harlow has emerged as a leader in formal field theory and continues MIT’s great tradition in formal theory," says Peter Fisher, professor and head of MIT’s Department of Physics.

Harlow researches black holes by combining quantum mechanics and Einstein's general relativity. The Packard Foundation recognized Harlow’s use of ideas from quantum computation to generate new insights about both black holes and quantum computers.