Years of work advancing computing technologies and efforts to support people navigating family court have earned national recognition from the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) for two members of the Queen’s community.

Queen’s researcher Bhavin Shastri (Department of Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy) has received the 2026 Rutherford Memorial Medal in Physics, while Queen’s Law graduate Raquel Medeiros has received the Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella Prize.

The RSC is the country’s national academy, recognizing leading contributions to research, scholarship and the arts.

The 2026 awards program spans a range of disciplines, recognizing 17 Canadian scholars, artists and scientists, including recipients of the Rutherford Memorial Medals. Awarded annually, the medals recognize outstanding research in physics and chemistry, with one recipient in each field.

The program also recognizes 24 graduating law students through the Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella Prize. Named for the former Supreme Court of Canada justice, the prize is presented annually to a graduating student at each Canadian law school who is considered most likely to positively influence equity and social justice in Canada or globally.

“Recognition from the Royal Society of Canada is among the country’s most prestigious honours, and I congratulate Bhavin and Raquel on this outstanding achievement,” says Nancy Ross, Vice-Principal (Research). “Building on Queen’s legacy of strength in physics, Bhavin’s pioneering work at the intersection of photonics and artificial intelligence is advancing the future of computing and demonstrates the far-reaching impact of research taking place at the university. It is wonderful to see both recipients recognized nationally for their contributions to their fields and to society.”
 

Rutherford Medal honours contributions to physics

Dr. Shastri studies how light can be used to process information in ways that are faster and more efficient than conventional electronic systems. His research helped establish neuromorphic photonics, which uses ideas from neural networks to develop new computing systems, and he co-authored the first textbook devoted to the field. 

At the Shastri Lab, he and his collaborators have shown that lasers can mimic some behaviours of biological neurons and that photonic components can be linked into networks for artificial intelligence and signal processing. These systems use light to move information quickly and perform many operations at once. 

The same research is being applied to problems in optimization, communications, and quantum information. Among those advances is a programmable photonic Ising machine published in Nature, which can tackle complex optimization problems at more than 200 billion operations per second. Photonic processors developed through his work have also been used in communications, correcting distortion across a 10,000-kilometre trans-Pacific fibre-optic link and reducing interference in radar and wireless systems. His team is also exploring how neural-network concepts could support more scalable quantum technologies. 

“Receiving the Rutherford Memorial Medal is a tremendous honour, and I see it as recognition of the people and ideas that have shaped this work,” says Dr. Shastri. “Our goal has always been to understand how the physics of light can open new possibilities for computing, and I am grateful to the students, collaborators and mentors who have helped move that work forward.”

Dr. Shastri is the first Queen’s physics professor to receive the Rutherford Memorial Medal in Physics since Malcolm Stott received the inaugural medal in 1980.

The Rutherford Medal adds to a series of recent distinctions for Dr. Shastri, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Neuromorphic Photonic Computing, is a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, and has received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Physics.
 

Abella Prize honours work in law

During her time at Queen’s Law, Medeiros worked with people facing family law and child protection issues while also creating resources to make legal information easier to understand. Through Pro Bono Students Canada, she produced a podcast on children’s participation in family law proceedings and a plain-language brochure for North Bay residents dealing with Child Protection Services.

As a student caseworker with the Family Justice Centre and Queen’s Family Law Clinic, Medeiros assisted more than 100 self-represented litigants navigating family court. She also initiated a referral partnership between the two clinics to help connect clients with needed services and returned to the Family Law Clinic in her final year as a student mentor, training new caseworkers and helping guide active files.

Medeiros also co-authored research with Queen’s Law professor Nicholas Bala examining trends in Ontario court decisions involving shared parenting, a subject closely tied to the family law issues she encountered through her clinical work.

Dr. Shastri and Medeiros will be celebrated at the RSC award ceremony on Nov. 13 during the annual Celebration of Excellence and Engagement in Ottawa.

Learn more about the 2026 RSC awards.