2026 Highlights List
Women in Physics
Physics
Featured in the 2026 Women in STEM Highlights List: Anne L'Huillier, PhD, Kerstin Perez, PhD.
Anne L'Huillier, PhD
Anne L'Huillier is a French/Swedish physicist working on the interaction between short and intense laser fields and atoms. She won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics alongside Pierre Agostini and Ferenc Krausz for her experiments producing pulses of light so short that they are measured in attoseconds, thus demonstrating that these pulses can be used to provide images of processes inside atoms and molecules. Anne obtained her PhD from Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris and the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (CEA) and is a professor at Lund University, Sweden.
PhysicsKerstin Perez, PhD
Kerstin Perez is an astrophysicist studying dark matter interactions using cosmic particles. Her work focuses on unexplored cosmic signatures, with impact at the intersection of particle physics, astrophysics, and advanced instrumental techniques. Perez is the Lavine Family Associate Professor of the Natural Sciences in the Department of Physics at Columbia University. She has won numerous awards, including a Sloan Research Fellowship, Cottrell Scholar Award, APS DPF Early Career Instrumentation Award, and MIT School of Science Teaching Prize for Undergraduate Education. She earned her B.A. in physics from Columbia University and her Ph.D. from Caltech.