On May 27 local time, the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences, announced the results of its 2026 Fellowship elections, with 93 Fellows and 1 Honorary Fellow elected this year. According to the Society, “This year’s cohort includes pioneers and leaders across a range of scientific fields, from astronomy and cancer research to mathematics and biotechnology.” Among this year’s newly elected Fellows and Honorary Fellows, 26% are women. The new Fellows come from 20 institutions across the UK, including the University of Lancaster, the University of Southampton, and BirdLife International. They have also been elected from countries around the world, including Kenya, Japan, and Mexico. An analysis of the institutional affiliations of the 93 newly elected Fellows shows that 70 of them are affiliated with universities. These Fellows come from 45 universities in total, meaning that university-affiliated members account for as much as 75% of the cohort, highlighting the dominant role of universities in scientific research. (If a Fellow has multiple affiliations, each institution is counted separately.) The University of Oxford had the largest number of newly elected Fellows this year, with 12 scholars successfully elected, demonstrating its leading position in scientific research in the UK. The University of Cambridge followed with 7 newly elected Fellows, also delivering an impressive performance. Harvard University, University College London, and the University of California, Berkeley each had 3 scholars elected. The California Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Queen Mary University of London, the University of Chicago, the University of Manchester, the University of Sheffield, the University of Toronto, and the University of Washington each had 2 scholars elected. In addition, 32 other universities each had 1 scholar elected. It is also worth noting that Dame Anne Rafferty was elected as an Honorary Fellow this year. She previously served as the former Chancellor of the University of Sheffield. Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, said: “Our Fellowship is strengthened not only by individual distinction, but by the diversity of perspectives and experiences its members bring. This incoming cohort highlights the truly international character of contemporary science and underscores the vital role that plays in achieving breakthroughs that benefit us all.” About the Royal SocietyThe Royal Society’s fundamental purpose, reflected in its founding Charters of the 1660s, is to recognise, promote and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity. As an independent Fellowship made up of the most eminent scientists, engineers and technologists from across the scientific landscape, the Society recognises excellence and elects Fellows from all over the world. Fellows are elected for life through a peer review process on the basis of excellence in science. There are currently approximately 1,900 Fellows, including around 85 Nobel Laureates. Each year up to 109 Fellows (including up to 24 via the Foreign Membership route) are elected from a group of around 800 candidates who are proposed by the existing Fellowship.
On May 27, The Shaw Prize officially announced the winners of the 2026 awards in the three fields of Astronomy, Life Science and Medicine, and Mathematical Sciences. Scholars from institutions including The University of Tokyo, University of California, Santa Cruz, Collège de France, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Stanford University were among the recipients. The list of award winners is as follows: The Shaw Prize in Astronomy 2026 is awarded in equal shares to Ken’ichi Nomoto, Emeritus Professor and Visiting Senior Scientist of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, the University of Tokyo, Japan, and Stanford Woosley, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA, for their studies of stellar explosions and the origin of the elements. The Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine 2026 is awarded in equal shares to Anne Dejean, Professor Emerita at the Institut Pasteur, France, Hugues de Thé, Professor and Chair of Cellular and Molecular Oncology at the Collège de France and Zhu Chen, Professor, Ruijin Hospital, School of Medicine at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, PRC for the discovery of the molecular and cellular bases of Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia (APL) and the pioneering of a synergistic targeted therapy that transformed the disease from one of the most deadly to one of the most curable cancers. The Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences 2026 is awarded in equal shares to Emmanuel Candès, the Barnum–Simons Chair in Mathematics and Statistics, Stanford University, USA and Camillo De Lellis, the IBM von Neumann Professor, School of Mathematics, Institute for Advanced Study, USA for their breakthrough contributions to the use of deep techniques from mathematical analysis to rigorously understand applied problems in information theory, signal processing and statistics on the one hand, and to the study of singularities in geometric measure theory and fluid dynamics on the other. About The Shaw Prize The Shaw Prize is dedicated to futhering societal progress, enhancing quality of life, and enriching humanity's spiritual civilisation. The Prize consists of four annual awards — the Prize in Astronomy, the Prize in Life Science and Medicine, and the Prize in Mathematical Sciences, awarded since 2004, and the Prize in Computer Science, introduced in 2026. Each Prize carries a monetary award, which has been set at one million two hundred thousand US dollars since 2016. Since 2004, The Shaw Prize has recognised over a hundred exceptional individuals who have made groundbreaking contributions to their respective fields, many of whom have gone on to receive other prestigious international awards.
On May 21 local time, the Australian Academy of Science(AAS) announced the election of 26 new Fellows and two Corresponding Members for 2026. The newly elected members come from a wide range of fields, including immunology, paleontology, and quantum computing. According to statistics, 22 of the 26 new Fellows are affiliated with universities, accounting for 84.6% of the total, highlighting the leading role of higher education institutions in scientific research. Among them, five universities — Australian National University, The University of Melbourne, The University of Sydney, The University of Western Australia, and the University of New South Wales — each had three scholars elected, demonstrating particularly strong performance. Monash University had two scholars elected, while another five universities each had one scholar elected. In addition, the Academy has also elected two Corresponding Members — distinguished international scientists with strong ties to Australia who have made outstanding contributions to science. The two scholars are from the Indian Institute of Science and the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The full list of newly elected members is as follows: Academy President Professor Chennupati Jagadish AC said this year’s cohort demonstrated both the depth of Australian science and the pathway from discovery to impact. “This cohort includes scientists whose work is rewriting the textbooks and has changed the world,” Professor Jagadish said. About Fellows of the Australian Academy of ScienceFellows of the Australian Academy of Science are among the nation’s most distinguished scientists, elected by their peers for ground-breaking research and contributions that have had clear impact. Each year the Academy may elect up to 24 new Fellows by ‘Ordinary Election’ and up to four additional Fellows by ‘Special Election’. From 1954 to 2025, there have been 965 Fellows elected to the Academy. Each year the Academy’s Council may invite up to two distinguished overseas scientists to join the Academy as Corresponding Members.
On May 18,The Brown Institute for Basic Sciences at Caltech 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. The eight scholars come respectively from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of California, Berkeley, Northwestern University, Johns Hopkins University, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Michigan, Harvard University, and University of California, Santa Barbara. The 2026 investigators are as follows: "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. 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. 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. To determine the new cohort, 24 research universities from across the United States 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.
On May 11 (local time), the President of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, Catherine Karakatsanis, announced the election of fifty new Fellows and six new International Fellows into the Academy. Ms. Karakatsanis commented: “I am delighted to welcome the new Fellows to the Academy whose impressive accomplishments and leadership in their respective fields have significantly advanced engineering in both Canada and around the world. Their outstanding contributions and dedication to excellence serve as an inspiration to us all.” Among the 50 newly elected members, 28 are affiliated with 19 universities, accounting for nearly half of the total, highlighting the leading role of academia. The University of Toronto had the largest number of newly elected members in this round, with six scholars successfully selected, underscoring its status as a top Canadian institution. Polytechnique Montréal, Queen's University, University of Waterloo, and Western University each had two members elected, demonstrating strong performance. The remaining 13 universities each had one elected member. The six newly elected International Fellows come from Tsinghua University, University of Maryland, College Park, City University of Hong Kong, University of Southern California, University of Houston, and the Institute of Chemical Technology. They have all made outstanding contributions to the promotion of international scientific research collaboration. About The Canadian Academy of EngineeringThe Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE) is the national institution through which individuals, who have made outstanding contributions to engineering in Canada, provide strategic advice on matters of critical importance to Canada and to Canadians. The CAE is an independent, self-governing, and non-profit organization established in 1987. Fellows of the CAE are nominated and elected by their peers, in view of their distinguished achievements and career-long service. Fellows of the Canadian Academy of Engineering are committed to ensuring that Canada’s engineering expertise and experience are applied to the benefit of all Canadians.
The Ecological Society of America (ESA) has announced its 2026 cohort of Fellows, honoring members for outstanding contributions to ecological research, communication, education, management, and policy. The ESA Governing Board selected eight new Fellows and ten new Early Career Fellows this year. Fellows are elected for life and honored for significant achievements across academia, government, nonprofits, and broader society. Early Career Fellows are chosen within eight years of completing their terminal degree and serve a five-year term. The full list follows. The new honorees will be celebrated during a ceremony on July 27, 2026, at the ESA Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah.
On April 14, 2026, the Clay Mathematics Institute announced the recipients of the 2026 Clay Research Awards. The awards recognize three distinct groups for a total of ten scholars for their groundbreaking achievements. Among the laureates are two Chinese mathematicians: Hong Wang and Yu Deng. Orponen, Shmerkin, Wang, and ZahlA Clay Research Award is made to Tuomas Orponen (Jyväskylä), Pablo Shmerkin (UBC), Hong Wang (IHES and NYU), and Joshua Zahl (Nankai). They are honored for their remarkable work on geometric problems in harmonic analysis, leading to the proof of the Furstenberg set conjecture in the plane and the Kakeya conjecture in three dimensions. These results build on a new set of tools for multiscale analysis developed by these four mathematicians (and some others) over many papers. Older work in the field often described the geometry of a set in Euclidean space using just one number, such as the Hausdorff dimension of the set. Instead, the new work considers detailed information about the spacing of the set at each scale. Different spacing scenarios are exploited in different ways. Burklund, Hahn, Levy, and SchlankA Clay Research Award is made to Robert Burklund (Copenhagen), Jeremy Hahn (MIT), Ishan Levy (IAS and CMI), and Tomer Schlank (Chicago). They are recognized for their construction of counterexamples to Ravenel's "Telescope Conjecture," the last open conjecture from Ravenel’s visionary paper “Localization with respect to certain periodic homology theories.”. In one version, the telescope conjecture postulates an upper bound on the growth rate of the chromatic layers of the stable homotopy groups of spheres. The work of Burklund, Hahn, Levy and Schlank is the crest of a revolutionary new wave in K-theoretic techniques, to which they have each, independently, contributed. Their counterexamples imply that the p-rank of the stable homotopy groups of spheres grows faster than expected, and contains a proliferation of elements that are unaccountable by any prior understanding of the subject. This is a milestone achievement. Deng and Hani A Clay Research Award is made to Yu Deng (Chicago) and Zaher Hani (Michigan). Together with co-author Xiao Ma, they are honored for the rigorous derivation of the Boltzmann equation for long times, starting from a microscopic system of hard spheres. The result involves an exceptional mastery in combinatorics and in designing algorithms in extremely intricate models, and is a breakthrough in the field, 50 years after Lanford’s seminal result for short times, and more than 150 years after Boltzmann’s long-debated theory.
On April 2,The 2026 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize, Germany’s most prestigious award for researchers in the early stages of their academic careers, will be awarded to ten outstanding scientists, the German Research Foundation (DFG) has announced. This year’s recipients include three female and seven male researchers, selected from a total of 156 nominees across all scientific disciplines. Each winner will receive €200,000, which can be used to fund their further research work for up to three years. The prize winners were chosen by a committee chaired by Professor Dr. Peter H. Seeberger, biochemist and Vice President of the DFG. According to the committee, the selected researchers stood out for their exceptional achievements and strong potential for future scientific leadership. The official award ceremony is scheduled to take place on 11 June 2026 in Berlin. The full list of winners is as follows:
The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), Scotland’s National Academy, has announced that 43 individuals deemed excellent in their field were elected as RSE Fellows in 2026. These new Fellows will use their knowledge for the public good. Among the new cohort, 15 Fellows are from the University of Edinburgh and five from the University of St Andrews. Approximately one third of the new Fellows come from public health and related health science disciplines, reflecting the RSE’s commitment to supporting and mobilising its influence to improve the lives of all Scots and the wider global community. Fellows are elected to the RSE in recognition of excellence in their disciplines, and an ongoing commitment to advancing knowledge for the benefit of society as a whole. This year’s cohort represents the best that Scotland’s institutions and business community has to offer, with particular breadth of talent in public health and medical research.
On 31 March, Anthropic signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Australian government to cooperate on AI safety research and support the goals of Australia’s National AI Plan. The MOU establishes a formal foundation for collaboration on responsible AI development. Key commitments include working with Australia's AI Safety Institute on sharing findings, joint safety evaluations, and research collaboration. Anthropic will also share its Economic Index data to track AI's economic impact, initially focusing on natural resources, agriculture, healthcare, and financial services, and is exploring investments in data center infrastructure and energy across Australia. As part of the broader collaboration, Anthropic is extending its AI for Science program to Australia with an AUD $3 million investment in Claude API credits to four institutions: Australian National University (ANU): Using Claude to analyze genetic sequencing data to tackle rare diseases; embedding Claude into computing courses to train next‑generation developers and scientists.Garvan Institute of Medical Research: Accelerating genomic discovery in two projects: one to translate genetic variation into disease insights for new treatments, and another,in collaboration with the Centre for Population Genomics (a joint initiative of Garvan and the Murdoch Children's Research Institute), to automate complex genetic analysis——currently a major bottleneck in diagnosing children with rare genetic conditions.Murdoch Children’s Research Institute: Applying Claude to stem cell medicine to improve identification of therapeutic targets for childhood heart disease.Curtin University: Using Claude to scale data science research across health sciences, humanities, business, law, science, and engineering via the Curtin Institute for Data Science.Additionally, Anthropic launched a deep tech startup API credit program for venture‑backed startups in drug discovery, materials science, climate modeling, and medical diagnostics, offering up to USD $50,000 (approx. AUD $72,000) in credits.
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