10/21/2026
Karthik Shekhar, the John F. Heil, Jr. Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) and faculty member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, has been selected as the recipient of the 2026 Philomathia Prize.
Established through a generous endowment gift from the Philomathia Foundation, the annual prize is awarded to an early-career Berkeley faculty member, from any discipline, who demonstrates great distinction and promise in their academic field. The prize provides a monetary award for use at the recipient's discretion over a three-year period. Shekhar is the fifth recipient of the Philomathia Prize and the third College Of Chemistry - UC Berkeley faculty member selected for this honor.
Shekhar receives the prize to advance research into the bioelectric basis of neural activity, a project that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic through conversations with his departmental colleague and co-investigator, Associate Professor Kranthi Mandadapu.
The project supported by the Philomathia Prize will continue Shekhar and Mandadapu’s joint efforts to build a foundation of fundamental knowledge about how biological electricity works in the body at the microscopic scale.
"I could not have imagined any other place than Berkeley to do this research," Shekhar said. "As long as you are working on something intellectually interesting, as long as you’re doing technically rigorous work, you are given the freedom to pursue it."
The Philomathia Prize will be presented during the Philomathia Day symposium on November 5. Learn more about the prize and Shekhar's research at gobears.me/4BqQ2xI
