Harvey Mudd Physicist Daniel Tamayo Named Cottrell Scholar

Harvey Mudd College Professor of Physics Daniel Tamayo has been named a 2026 Cottrell Scholar, an award given each year to 25 outstanding teacher-scholars in chemistry, physics and astronomy by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA). Each award includes a $120,000 grant.

Cottrell Scholars are chosen through a rigorous peer-review process of applications from public and private research universities and primarily undergraduate institutions in the United States and Canada. Their award proposals incorporate both research and science education.

“It’s exciting to become a part of and interact with a remarkable group of scholars across many different fields and interests, particularly at a time when federal funding for science is so uncertain,” Tamayo said. “This grant will allow us to integrate some of our group’s recent theoretical developments into our open-source numerical packages and probe the chaotic early phases of planetary systems’ lives. This will help elucidate the dominant physical processes shaping the orbital configurations that planetary systems settle into, which we can test against the large and rapidly expanding demographics of planetary systems discovered around other stars.

Planetary Systems Research

Each planetary system that is discovered orbiting another star is the product of a sequence of violent rearrangements through interplanetary collisions and ejections, which presumably has reached a long-term stable configuration. Yet, understanding whether a given orbital configuration of planets will lead to collisions or be long-term stable, remains a major unsolved problem.

Through this Cottrell Scholars Award, Tamayo will combine recent theoretical developments in the dynamics driving such instabilities with machine learning methods to develop an interpretable stability classifier and apply these tools to better understand the planet formation process. Researchers will leverage the rapidly growing ecosystem of open-source astrophysics codes to develop numerical demonstrations and homework exercises for an upper-level introduction to astrophysics survey course. These educational materials will be publicly hosted and will provide students around the world with hands-on learning activities and a practical on-ramp into the numerical tools used in cutting-edge astronomical research.

“This is an exceptional cohort of teacher‑scholars whose innovative work fuels discovery across the physical sciences,” said Eric Isaacs, president and CEO of RCSA. “Their insights and energy will strengthen a 600‑member network of researchers, leaders and mentors dedicated to pushing the boundaries of knowledge while shaping the future of science and science teaching in the United States and Canada.”

Read the RCSA news release about the 2026 Cottrell Scholars.