The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has announced its selection of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration as the recipient of the 2026 Lancelot M. Berkeley–New York Community Trust Prize. Established in 2011, the prize is awarded annually to recognize outstanding and highly meritorious work in astronomy that advanced the field in the previous year. Previous recipients have included both individuals and teams for their work in diverse areas of astronomy.
The 2026 prize recognizes the DESI collaboration for its work on two papers published this year. The first, published in February, presents baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) results from the first year of DESI data, while the second, released in March, reports BAO results from observations of 14 million galaxies and quasars, obtained in the first three years of DESI operations.
Dr. Will Percival, Associate Faculty member at Perimeter Institute and Director of the University of Waterloo’s Centre for Astrophysics, is co-spokesperson for the DESI experiment. His role has given him a front-row seat to the amazing science happening within this collaboration.
“DESI is an amazing experiment, able to perform a galaxy survey that is more than 20 times faster than previous experiments,” he says. “Whenever you have such an experimental advance, you open a huge discovery space, as the recent results from DESI have demonstrated. It’s great to receive this award from the American Astronomical Society recognizing the hard work that has been put in to make DESI a reality by many hundreds of scientists around the world.”
The observations not only constitute the largest 3D map of the Universe ever made, they also provide new insights into the nature of dark energy and the evolution of the Universe. When combined with other cosmological constraints, the DESI results provide strong hints that dark energy evolves over time, challenging our current leading model of the Universe, Lambda CDM.
À propos de l’IP
L'Institut Périmètre est le plus grand centre de recherche en physique théorique au monde. Fondé en 1999, cet institut indépendant vise à favoriser les percées dans la compréhension fondamentale de notre univers, des plus infimes particules au cosmos tout entier. Les recherches effectuées à l’Institut Périmètre reposent sur l'idée que la science fondamentale fait progresser le savoir humain et catalyse l'innovation, et que la physique théorique d'aujourd'hui est la technologie de demain. Situé dans la région de Waterloo, cet établissement sans but lucratif met de l'avant un partenariat public-privé unique en son genre avec entre autres les gouvernements de l'Ontario et du Canada. Il facilite la recherche de pointe, forme la prochaine génération de pionniers de la science et communique le pouvoir de la physique grâce à des programmes primés d'éducation et de vulgarisation.
