2025 5 Sigma Physicist honorees celebrated for advocacy and public engagement work
Thirty-six APS members and one volunteer team received the newly expanded honor.
When Gay Stewart talks about the impacts of federal science funding, she doesn't start with research details. She starts with local students.
“West Virginia has one of the smallest college attendance rates in the country,” says Stewart, director of the University of West Virginia’s Center for Excellence in STEM Education. “We have a large number of parents who don’t understand why their kids would even want to go to college. Federal funding helps us promote STEM education as a key to lucrative careers.”
With the help of APS staff, Stewart turned her experiences as an educator and advocate into an op-ed, “STEM Funding Crucial — and at Risk,” which she published in the Charleston Gazette-Mail. In her article, she explains how federal STEM programs power local research and help West Virginia students pursue high-paying science careers.
“Advocacy is basically a requirement at this point if we want to create opportunities for young people to join the scientific enterprise,” says Stewart.
Stewart’s article was part of a national APS strategic advocacy campaign against the White House’s proposed cuts to the federal science budget for fiscal year 2026. APS members from across the country wrote to their local newspapers about the importance of federal funding, calling on their representatives to support robust science budgets. Congress later rejected the cuts, preserving around $10 billion in funding for four key science agencies.
In recognition of their advocacy, Stewart and the other op-ed writers were recently named 2025 5 Sigma Physicist honorees. They are among 36 APS members announced as recipients, the largest cohort in the honor’s history.
The 5 Sigma Physicist Honor was established in 2014 to celebrate members that took substantial advocacy actions. Its criteria have been newly expanded to include volunteers across all the society’s public affairs activities. For the first time, 16 of the 2025 honorees were selected for public engagement.
These individuals “reached local communities across the country,” says Mark Elsesser, director of public affairs at APS.
One such honoree is Marilena Longobardi, the executive director and scientific coordinator of the National Center of Competence in Research’s SPIN program. Longobardi served on the organizing and creative team for QuantumFest, a celebration of the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology during the 2025 Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California. The event brought quantum physics to the public through performances, art installations, and interactive educational experiences.
“We really wanted to think outside of the box,” Longobardi says about planning the event. “For the Quantum Jubilee, which kicked off QuantumFest, we had music, theater, and even a circus. Attendees explored quantum entanglement through a live demonstration of an International Space Station experiment and heard lectures from Nobel laureates.”
Organizing QuantumFest’s extensive range of activities was logistically complex. The team had to find suitable spaces and acquire special equipment for performers, all while serving hundreds of participants.
“It was fascinating working with varying types of expression,” says Longobardi. “We managed to align these artistic languages in a way that helped people better understand quantum. It was challenging, but also really motivating.”
Other 5 Sigma Physicist honorees advocated on Capitol Hill, developed physics lessons for secondary school teachers, joined digital campaigns, and led public engagement activities. The team behind 2025’s Squishy Science Sunday at the Global Physics Summit also received a special group citation for organizing the popular family-friendly physics outreach event.
While the work varied, the honorees were united in their mission to make physics accessible to outside audiences.
“Communicating science is our duty as physicists,” Longobardi says. “We need to step out of our labs and show people how science serves society.”
Stewart agrees. “Anything we can do to help people understand that supporting science means supporting their own priorities is time well spent,” she says. “APS offers fantastic resources to help spread that message. We should all use them.”
Learn more about advocacy and public engagement opportunities at APS.