Submitted by S. Brereton on Tue, 13/01/2026 - 13:18
Professor Anne-Christine Davis OBE, KICC Faculty member and Emeritus Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) has been awarded a 2025 Buchalter Cosmology Prize alongside an international team of collaborators. The prize (2nd place), announced on January 8, 2026 during the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, recognizes groundbreaking work with the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the universe's origin, structure and evolution.
The winning paper, titled “A Minimal Axio-dilaton Dark Sector”, was published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. The judging panel praised it as “a new and remarkable model of how two interacting fields—the axion and the dilaton—could constitute the entire dark sector of the Universe, providing a simple, common origin for dark matter and dark energy with distinctive observational signatures, which if found, would provide a testable alternative to the standard cosmological model.”
The team includes Dr. Adam Smith (University of Sheffield), Dr. Maria Mylova (Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe and Perimeter Institute), Dr. Philippe Brax (Université Paris-Saclay), Dr. Carsten van de Bruck (University of Sheffield), and Dr. Clifford Burgess (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, McMaster University, and Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies).
Professor Davis, the first woman appointed as a professor in the Faculty of Mathematics at Cambridge, has a distinguished career in cosmology, astrophysics, and string theory. She has previously received accolades, including the Institute of Physics' Richard Glazebrook Medal and an OBE for services to higher education and scientific research.
This latest recognition highlights Professor Davis's continued impact on advancing theories that could unify dark matter and dark energy, potentially reshaping the standard ΛCDM model with testable, minimal-field alternatives.
Please visit the Buchalter Cosmology Prize website for more details.
