The American Physical Society (APS) – the world’s largest organization of physicists – has awarded the 2026 Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics to Stefano Baroni, Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA) and research associate at the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche – Istituto Officina dei Materiali (CNR–IOM). The prize is regarded as the most prestigious international recognition in the field, awarded for outstanding achievements in computational physics.
The official citation recognizes his “seminal contributions to the development of first-principles methods for studying the electronic and thermal properties of condensed systems, and for the development and dissemination of open-source software for electronic-structure calculations, now widely adopted.”
“Like many recognitions that come later in life, this one is — if not above all — a tribute to the colleagues, and to the students, who made my work possible,” Baroni recounts. “The citation recalls three milestones of my career. The first dates back to the late 1980s when, as a young professor at SISSA, together with Paolo Giannozzi, we developed a method that later became widely used to calculate the dynamical and dielectric properties of solids. The second, in the last decade, concerns the development of a new theory of thermal conduction in condensed matter, made possible thanks to the ingenuity of some of the best students I had the pleasure to mentor at SISSA. Throughout my career, the third — only seemingly less noble, yet equally demanding and impactful — has been the creation, development, and promotion of the Quantum ESPRESSO software, now considered a standard tool for quantum materials simulations, whose development Paolo has long been leading and curating. To all of them goes my deepest and most affectionate gratitude for accompanying and supporting me.”
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