Igor Pikovski Receives $1.3 Million Keck Foundation Grant, a First for Stevens
The prestigious foundation backs high-risk research that challenges scientific convention — a fitting match for Pikovski’s quest to detect the most-wanted missing particle
Stevens Institute of Technology physicist Igor Pikovski has received a $1.3 million grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation — the first time in Stevens Institute of Technology’s history that a faculty member has been awarded funding from the prestigious organization. The three-year grant will support Pikovski’s collaboration with Yale University to pursue a bold experimental effort at the frontier of modern physics.
Established in 1954 by oil industry pioneer William Myron Keck, the W. M. Keck Foundation is among the nation’s most selective philanthropic supporters of scientific research. Its science and engineering program is known for backing a small number of projects each year that take unconventional approaches, challenge prevailing assumptions and carry the potential for transformative impact — ideas often considered too early-stage or high-risk for traditional funding agencies.
“The Keck Foundation funds ideas that might seem too bold to attempt,” said Pikovski, the Geoffrey S. Inman ’51 Assistant Professor of Physics. “That’s exactly the category this work falls into. We’re trying to detect gravitons, the quantum building blocks of gravity, something that the physics community long assumed could never be measured.”
The award builds on Pikovski’s growing national and international recognition as a leader in research on testing quantum gravity. In 2024, he published a widely read paper in Nature Communications demonstrating that graviton detection, long viewed as impossible, may be achievable in principle using modern quantum technologies. The paper became the journal’s most-accessed physics article of the year and was later featured in Quanta Magazine.
For Stevens, the Keck award represents a significant milestone. Keck funding is highly competitive and typically concentrated at a small number of research-intensive institutions. Securing a first Keck grant reflects Stevens’ expanding research profile and its ability to attract and support faculty pursuing ambitious, high-impact ideas.
“Professor Pikovski's recognition by the Keck Foundation is a proud moment for Stevens,” said Stevens President Nariman Farvardin. “This is our first Keck award, and it reflects what we aspire to as a university — world-class faculty creating knowledge that transforms our understanding of the world.”
Pikovski joined Stevens in 2018 following a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He was named a Stevens Presidential Fellow in 2023, and his honors include an NSF CAREER Award and the Branco Weiss Fellowship. His research group has pioneered new approaches to testing the interplay of gravity and quantum theory.
