FRIB’s Heiko Hergert and Steve Lidia named 2026 American Physical Society Fellows

Heiko Hergert, associate professor of physics at FRIB and in the MSU Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Steve Lidia, manager of the Beam Instrumentation and Measurements Department at FRIB and adjunct professor of physics and electrical and computer engineering at FRIB and MSU, have been named 2026 Fellows of the American Physical Society (APS).

APS is the major professional organization for physicists in the United States. It has over 50,000 members from academia, national laboratories, and industry. The mission of APS is to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics for the benefit of humanity, promote physics, and serve the broader physics community. 

Hergert was elected as a Fellow for “groundbreaking contributions to nuclear many-body theory, especially new methods and applications of the In-Medium Similarity Renormalization Group to the structure and properties of atomic nuclei, such as neutrinoless double-beta decay.”

Lidia was elected as a Fellow for “broad contributions to accelerator science and technology, especially worldwide leadership in the fields of heavy-ion beam instrumentation and single-event effects.”

Fellows are selected for their outstanding contributions to physics. Each year, the number of APS Fellows elected is no more than one half of one percent of the membership, excluding student members.

Michigan State University operates the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) as a user facility for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science (DOE-SC), with financial support from and furthering the mission of the DOE-SC Office of Nuclear Physics.