Also known as the 'Oscar of Science', the Breakthrough Prize was established in 2012 by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Julia and Yuri Milner, and Anne Wojcicki, and it represents one of the most prestigious international scientific awards. Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Cumrun Vafa and Sergio Ferrara are just some of the winners in recent years.
As part of the Breakthrough Prizes, the 'New Horizon in Physics Prize' is dedicated to early-career physicists who have distinguished themselves through the relevance of the results obtained in their studies. The winner of the 'New Horizon in Physics Prize 2024' is former SISSA PhD student Marko Simonović, now a researcher in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Florence.
Simonović, together with his colleagues Mikhail Ivanov and Oliver Philcox, was honoured for his contributions to understanding the large-scale structure of the Universe and developing new tools to explore the existence of a new fundamental physics based on galaxy surveys.
During his time at SISSA Simonović worked in the AstroParticle physics group, also collaborating with the International Centre for Theoretical Physics - ICTP in Trieste. It was under the guidance of Prof. Paolo Creminelli of ICTP that Simonović developed his thesis project, entitled 'Cosmological Consistency Relations', with which he received his PhD degree from our school in 2014.
Simonović is the sole researcher in Italy to be honoured at this year's Oscars of Science. The award ceremony will take place in Los Angeles on April 13th.