Each investigator, recognized for curiosity-driven research in chemistry or physics, will receive up to $2 million over five years
The Brown Institute for Basic Sciences at Caltech today announced the 2026 class of Brown Investigators. The cohort, the third to be selected through the Brown Institute for Basic Sciences, comprises eight distinguished mid-career faculty working on fundamental challenges in the physical sciences, particularly those with potential long-term practical applications in chemistry and physics. Each investigator will receive up to $2 million over five years.
"My hope is that these awards will provide talented mid-career researchers with stable and secure funding at a moment of their career when they are poised to make a significant impact in their field, giving them time to focus and develop their line of thinking," says entrepreneur, philanthropist, and Caltech alumnus Ross M. Brown (BS '56, MS '57), who established the Brown Institute for Basic Sciences at Caltech in 2023 through a $400-million gift to the Institute.
The 2026 investigators are:
Jillian Dempsey, professor of chemistry, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, to develop new strategies for the light-driven synthesis of chemicals and fuels by leveraging the unique properties of transition metal catalysts.
Naomi Ginsberg, professor of chemistry and physics, UC Berkeley, to study and optimize the assembly of complex functional materials by tracking and adaptively steering the formation processes in real time.
Julia Kalow, associate professor of chemistry, Northwestern University, to introduce electronic strong coupling—an interaction of light and matter that produces "quasiparticles" called polaritons—in organic reactions, enabling new strategies to control reactivity and selectivity.
Rebekka Klausen, professor of chemistry, Johns Hopkins University, to design and synthesize three-dimensional silicon polymers revealing novel electronic and quantum phenomena.
Anshul Kogar, associate professor of physics, UCLA, for studies to answer a fundamental question about high-temperature superconductors: Where is the energy saved in going from the metallic to the superconducting state?
Lu Li, professor of physics, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, to develop new thermal transport and resonance in high magnetic fields to probe the electronic states of insulators.
Kang-Kuen Ni, T. W. Richards Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics, Harvard University, for work to coax molecules into ordered arrays with tunable interactions, allowing the exploration and simulation of rich and exotic phases of matter.
David Weld, professor of physics, UC Santa Barbara, to use programmable matter–wave interference among arrays of Bose condensates to synthesize light–matter interfaces, with the goal of creating tunable quantum optical elements—mirrors, beamsplitters, and lenses—that are themselves capable of existing in quantum superposition and entangled states.
Brown established the Investigator Awards in 2020 through the Brown Science Foundation in support of the belief that scientific discovery is a driving force in the improvement of the human condition. The Brown Institute for Basic Sciences at Caltech seeks to advance fundamental science discoveries with the potential to seed breakthroughs that benefit society.
"We share Ross's enthusiasm for supporting outstanding mid-career investigators in chemistry and physics," says Caltech Provost David A. Tirrell, Carl and Shirley Larson Provostial Chair and Ross McCollum-William H. Corcoran Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. "The first three years of our partnership have exceeded our expectations, and we look forward to working with Ross, the Scientific Advisory Board, and the Brown Investigators to continue to advance fundamental science across the nation."
Including this year's cohort, a total of 37 investigators have been named to date; 24 have been installed over the past three years under the auspices of the Brown Institute for Basic Sciences at Caltech.
Previous awardees include Hailiang Wang of Yale University, who is working on new methods to convert inorganic waste molecules, such as CO2 and NOx, into valuable organic compounds; Kerri A. Pratt of the University of Michigan, for research to discover the chemical compounds and chemical mechanisms in the Arctic's rapidly warming atmosphere; and Robert Knowles of Princeton University, to explore a novel hypothesis for the evolution of homochirality—the presence in nature of only one of two mirror-image forms of biomolecules.
Brown Investigators from all cohorts are invited to an annual meeting that offers opportunities to share ideas. The third annual meeting was held at Caltech in February 2026.
To determine the new cohort, 24 research universities from across the country were invited to nominate faculty members who had earned tenure within the last 10 years and who are doing innovative fundamental research in the physical sciences. Nominees were then evaluated by an independent scientific review board that recommended grant winners. In administering the program, Caltech refrains from nominating its own scientists for Brown Investigator Awards. In return, the Institute draws other funds from the Brown gift to support fundamental research in chemistry and physics.