The Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario, announced on April 14, 2026, that faculty member Mayuko Yamashita has been awarded the Hideki Yukawa Chair in Theoretical Physics. The position is supported by a $1.5 million gift from an anonymous donor, which will be matched by the institute’s founder, Mike Lazaridis.
This six-year funding commitment is part of an ongoing effort to support early-career researchers at the centre. Yamashita, who joined the faculty in 2025, specializes in mathematical physics, with a focus on how stable homotopy theory applies to areas such as geometry, topology, and quantum field theory.
The new chair is named after Hideki Yukawa, a Japanese theoretical physicist who became the first Japanese Nobel laureate after winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1949 for his work predicting the existence of mesons. Yamashita’s own career has already been recognized with several major honours, including the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize and the Dannie Heineman Prize.
The announcement comes under the leadership of Marcela Carena, who became the first female Executive Director of the institute in November 2024. As a hub for theoretical physics that operates as a public-private partnership with the provincial and federal governments, the institute continues to draw global research talent to the Waterloo region.
