The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration has been awarded the 2026 Lancelot M. Berkeley – New York Community Trust Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy. This award has been given annually since 2021 by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) for research published within the preceding 12 months. 

DESI was recognized for two significant papers that test the leading model of the accelerating expansion of the universe with the largest 3D map of the universe ever obtained. The collaboration’s analysis of these observations suggest the accelerating expansion, which is commonly ascribed to some mysterious dark energy, may be more complex than required by previous studies. 

DESI is an international collaboration with many hundreds of scientists that includes significant  participation from faculty, staff, and students at Ohio State. These include physics faculty Klaus Honscheid and Ashley Ross and astronomy faculty Paul Martini and David Weinberg. 

Other Ohio State members of the collaboration include Brandon Abrego, Mikel Charles, Xinyi Chen, Shea DeFour-Remy, Ann Elliott, Anning Gao, Meagan Herbold, Naim Karacayli, Claire Lamman, Everett McArthur, Michael Rashkovetskyi, Peter Taylor, Wynne Turner, Molly Wolfson and Erik Zaborowski.

DESI is managed by the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and was constructed with funding from the DOE Office of Science. DESI is mounted on the US National Science Foundation’s 4-m Mayall telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.

More information about the award is available from the Press Release from the American Astronomical Society.

Image Credit: Claire Lamman/DESI collaboration