Maruyama, Lesher elected fellows by the American Physical Society

The American Physical Society (APS) has elected Yale associate professor of physics Reina Maruyama and Yale Presidential Visiting Scholar Shelly Lesher as fellows of the society.

APS is a nonprofit membership organization that advances the knowledge of physics and has more than 55,000 members, including physicists in academia, national laboratories, and industry. The society announced the election of 163 fellows for 2020 on Sept. 28.

The citation for Maruyama lauded her “innovative and wide-ranging contributions to the experimental study of rare events and fundamental symmetries, especially the search for neutrinoless double beta decay, and for leadership in understanding the signature and nature of dark matter.”

Lesher was honored “for advocating on behalf of the essential role of physics education for all students.” Lesher, an associate professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, was a Yale Presidential Visiting Scholar during the 2019-2020 academic year and remains affiliated with Yale’s Wright Lab and the Department of Physics.