Meet the 2025 Plenary Speakers

Jocelyn Bell Burnell is perhaps best known for her 1967 discovery of pulsars as a graduate student. In 2018 she was awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for the discovery and donated her award money to help women, people from historically excluded groups, and refugee students become physics researchers. She received her bachelor’s degree in natural philosophy (physics) in 1965 from the University of Glasgow and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. She held several research and academic positions throughout her career, received damehood, and served as president of the Royal Astronomical Society and Institute of Physics.

Eric Cornell is a 2001 physics Nobel laureate, alongside Wolfgang Ketterle and Carl Wieman, for his role in synthesizing the first Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). He graduated with a physics bachelor’s degree from Stanford University in 1985 and then earned a PhD at MIT. After completing his degree, Cornell joined Carl Wieman’s lab at the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder as a postdoc on a small laser-cooling experiment. This started him on the path that led to his Nobel Prize work—and beyond. Cornell is a professor at CU Boulder and a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology .

Donnell Walton is known for his work in optics and applied physics in both industry and academia. Walton received physics and electrical engineering bachelor’s degrees from North Carolina State University in 1989 and his PhD in applied physics from the University of Michigan in 1996. He then became a professor and founding member of the fiber laser and amplifier lab at Howard University. In 1999 Walton joined Corning Inc. as a project manager and worked his way up to director of the Corning West Technology Center, securing more than 22 patents along the way. He is currently an adjunct professor at Cornell University.

Julianne Pollard-Larkin is a medical physicist. She became interested in science at a young age but didn’t know about the field of medical physics until she was an undergraduate at the University of Miami. While accompanying her mother to radiation treatment for breast cancer, Pollard-Larkin met a medical physicist. That experience shaped her career plan. In 2008 she became the first Black woman to graduate with a PhD in biomedical physics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Pollard-Larkin then joined MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where she still works today as the physics section chief of thoracic services.

K. Renee Horton was the first Black person to receive a PhD in materials science with a concentration in physics from the University of Alabama, graduating with her doctorate in 2011. Prior to that, she received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Louisiana State University. Horton began working for NASA in 2012, where she still is today. She is also the founder of Unapologetically Being, Inc., a nonprofit engaged in mentoring and advocacy in STEM, and she served as the second female president for the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP). Horton is currently an airworthiness deputy at NASA and public speaker.

Sarah Hörst is an expert in planetary atmospheres. In 2018 her group demonstrated that they could simulate the atmospheres of exoplanets and moons in the lab, aiding in data analysis from the James Webb Space Telescope. Hörst received bachelor’s degrees in planetary science and literature from CalTech in 2004, then joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to do image analysis for the Cassini spacecraft. In 2011 she earned her PhD in planetary sciences from the University of Arizona. Hörst is a professor at Johns Hopkins University and is part of the team leading NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan.

2025 Physics & Astronomy Congress Plenary Speakers