2019 President’s Frontier Award Recipient & Finalists

Dr. Brice Ménard, an associate professor in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Physics and Astronomy, has demonstrated an exceptional ability to develop new and potentially far-reaching approaches to huge data sets. Brice uses information that is widely available to researchers, but his imagination and ingenuity lead to striking results, such as new ways to measure distances across the universe and a fresh understanding of its chemical evolution. Recently, Brice has been developing a new approach to organizing data sets in a way that reveals deep underlying patterns. His tool, known as the Sequencer, has been successful as a prototype and has the potential to yield significant breakthroughs not only in his own discipline of astronomy and other scientific fields but also in public health, business, and engineering.

“What is most striking about Brice’s contributions is the unique insight he has been able to gain working with astronomical data sets that were widely available to others,” said Dr. Beverly Wendland, James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School. “He used his imagination and expertise to conceive of new and potentially far-reaching applications of these data in novel ways that has often led to new and important results.”