Energy Department Announces 2026 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award Winners

WASHINGTON-U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright today announced nine recipients of the prestigious Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for their exceptional contributions to research and development supporting the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) missions in science, energy, and national security.

"This year's Lawrence Award recipients exemplify the ingenuity and determination that drive America's leadership in science and technology," said U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. "From achieving fusion ignition to advancing critical materials and high-performance computing, these scientists and engineers are tackling some of our nation's most complex challenges and translating groundbreaking research into real-world capabilities. Their work strengthens our nation's energy security, drives American innovation, and ensures the United States remains at the forefront of scientific discovery."

Established in 1959, the Lawrence Award recognizes mid-career U.S. scientists and engineers for groundbreaking achievements across nine scientific and engineering categories. The award is among the longest-running and most prestigious science and technology honors bestowed by the U.S. government.

The 2026 Ernest O. Lawrence Award recipients are:

• Eric J. Schelter, Ph.D. (University of Pennsylvania) - Atomic, Molecular, and Chemical Sciences - Honored for his "fundamental chemical studies of energy-critical metals leading to new methods for their selective and sustainable separations."
• Patrick Chain, Ph.D. (Los Alamos National Laboratory and New Mexico Consortium) - Biological and Environmental Sciences - Honored for his "pioneering work in genomics and microbiome science, including discoveries of new bacterial-fungal interactions and revolutionizing the field by democratizing access to advanced bioinformatics tools."
• Samuel W. Williams, Ph.D. (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) - Computer, Information, and Knowledge Sciences - Honored for his "pioneering contributions in performance modeling, hardware/software design optimization, and novel computer architecture for high-performance computing, enabling modeling of complex computational solutions, and increasing analysis speed, simulation accuracy, and computational efficiency."
• Thomas Epps, III, Ph.D. (University of Delaware) - Condensed Matter and Materials Sciences - Honored for his "fundamental contributions to chemistry and materials science with applications in the chemical upcycling of polymeric waste, generation of high-performance materials from biomass feedstocks, and development of membranes for lithium-ion battery technologies."
• Gregg Beckham, Ph.D. (National Laboratory of the Rockies and University of Colorado Boulder) - Energy Science and Innovation - Honored for his "transformative research in the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass and waste plastics via biology, chemistry, and engineering, yielding building blocks for sustainable fuels, chemicals, and materials."
• Andrea L. Kritcher, Ph.D. (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) - Fusion and Plasma Sciences - Honored for her "exceptional design efforts leading to the first-ever achievement of fusion ignition in the Laboratory, which is of major scientific impact to institutional and national missions, the private sector, and fusion interests within academia."
• Charles C. Polly, Ph.D. (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) - High Energy Physics - Honored for his "exceptional scientific and technical contributions to low-energy precision measurements in particle physics, most notably leadership of the experimental measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon with the Muon g-2 experiment."
• Michael Reed, Ph.D. (Nevada National Security Site) - National Security and Nonproliferation - Honored for his "vital contributions to national and international nuclear emergency response through the Advanced Visualization & Integration of Data (AVID) software, which broke existing paradigms by simultaneously fusing all radiological data into a single interface connected seamlessly to world-wide expertise."
• Lijuan Ruan, Ph.D. (Brookhaven National Laboratory) - Nuclear Physics - Honored for her "outstanding leadership and ingenuity in the design, construction, and operation of novel detector systems in the STAR experiment, transforming dilepton final states into precision probes of heavy ion collisions."

DOE will honor the recipients at a hybrid award ceremony in Washington, D.C., on November 13, 2026. The ceremony will be broadcast live online, and a recording will be available following the event. Registration is required for both virtual and in-person attendees. Due to space and security requirements, in-person attendance is limited, with registration closing October 30, 2026.

For more information and to RSVP, visit the DOE Office of Science Ernest O. Lawrence Award webpage.