China physicist Wang Yifang awarded 2016 Pontecorvo Prize

The jury of the International Bruno Pontecorvo prize announced on February 27 that the Bruno Pontecorvo Prize for 2016 is to be awarded to Prof. WANG Yifang from the Institute of High Energy Physics for his outstanding contribution to the study of neutrino oscillation phenomenon and to the measurement of the Theta13 mixing angle in the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino.

WANG is the first Chinese scientist to win this award. This is another international prize for WANG after he was awarded the W. K. H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics in 2014, the Nikkei Asia Prize in 2015 and the Fundamental Physics Breakthrough Award in 2016.

Prof. WANG was awarded the prize along with Prof. Kim Soo-Bong from Seoul National University in South Korea, and Prof. Koichiro Nishikawa from KEK in Japan, for their work on Reactor Experiment for Neutrino Oscillations (RENO) and Tokai to Kamioka long baseline neutrino oscillation (T2K) experiments, respectively.

The Bruno Pontecorvo Prize is a prize for elementary particle physics awarded by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia. The prize was established in 1995 to commemorate Prof. Bruno Pontecorvo, the "father of neutrino physics". In accordance with Pontecorvo's chief area of research, the prize is awarded mainly for neutrino physics.

WANG proposed the Daya Bay neutrino oscillation experiment in China, including the detailed detector design and experimental plan, to precisely measure the neutrino mixing angle theta13. He assembled a large international collaboration, and was elected co-spokesperson of the experiment.

The prize list for the 2016 Bruno Pontecorvo Prize was approved by the JINR Scientific Council at its 121st session on February 24. An award ceremony will be held in September this year.

Provided by Chinese Academy of Sciences