Professor David Kaplan and Associate Professor Surjeet Rajendran are recipients of the 2024 Frontiers of Science Award in Theoretical Physics awarded by the International Congress of Basic Science. The award recognizes a publication that they co-authored with Peter W. Graham titled “Cosmological Relaxation of the Electroweak Scale” as a breakthrough in its field of cosmological evolution.

The Frontiers of Science Award (FSA) was inaugurated in 2023 under the auspices of the International Congress of Basic Sciences (ICBS), and sponsored by the City of Beijing and the Yanqi Lake Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Application (BIMSA). An FSA is awarded to a recent paper, recognized for a major breakthrough in its field. Each year, researchers worldwide are invited to nominate candidates for the award. A panel of renowned experts is asked to review and select a shortlist of award candidates in each research area. A Global Committee is then empanelled by the ICBS to decide the winners from the pool of shortlisted candidates from different research areas. An FSA recipient is invited to the ICBS to accept the award in person in July 2024, at the Great Hall of People of China in Beijing. The total value of an FSA is USD25,000 before tax, shared by authors of a winning paper(s). In 2023, one hundred thirty-two awards were presented in three subjects: Mathematics, Theoretical Physics, and Theoretical Computer and Information Sciences.