Prize Recipient

Kaeli Hughes
Pennsylvania State University

"For leading the lowest threshold ultra-high energy astrophysical neutrino search to date, with data from the Askaryan Radio Array, and her efforts toward the development of future radio detectors for ultra-high energy astrophysical and cosmogenic neutrinos."

Kaeli A. Hughes received her bachelor’s of science in engineering physics in 2017 from the Ohio State University, and her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago in 2022. As an experimental particle astrophysicist searching for neutrinos above 10 PeV, she has collaborated on many experiments, including ANITA, ARA, BEACON, RNO-G, and PUEO. Her work on building, calibrating, and analyzing the data from ARA’s novel Phased Array instrument has informed the design of many next generation experiments in the field. Her honors include the 2022 Nathan Sugarman Award for Excellence in Graduate Research, the 2021 CCAPP Price Prize, and the Chair’s Award for Distinguished Service at the University of Chicago. She is currently a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Penn State University and was previously a Grainger Fellow and an Eckhardt Fellow at the University of Chicago.