2026 Killam Prize Winners Janis McKenna and Jess McIver elevate Science Education

May 21, 2026

We heartily congratulate 2025-2026 Killam Teaching Prize recipients, Janis McKenna and Jess McIver, for being named for this prestigious award, honouring their dedication to their students and leadership in their fields of physics.

Killam Teaching Prize winners in science are adjudicated within the UBC Faculty of Science and nominated by students and alumni and colleagues. Selected for their excellence in teaching, awardees will be recognized at this year’s May graduation ceremony on UBC-V campus.  

Janis McKenna
Janis started at UBC Physics & Astronomy as an Assistant Professor in 1993, became Associate Professor in 1997 and full Professor in 2005. Her research in experimental particle physics has included Heavy Quark Physics, Precision electroweak tests in Standard Model and CP violation, and much time spent on the BELLE II Experiment searching for evidence of new physics and electron-positron collisions at the KEK laboratory in Japan. 

Throughout her career she has taught courses, labs and tutorials from first to fifth (graduate level) year. Janis is widely known for her enthusiastic lectures, fun demos and passion in outreach and physics education, and as one student explains, as being “willing to move mountains to ensure students understand the material”.  

Jess McIver
Jess joined UBC Department of Physics and Astronomy  as an Assistant Professor in 2019 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2024. She holds a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Gravitational Wave Astrophysics and is currently appointed as the LIGO Scientific Collaboration’s Deputy Spokesperson. Her research explores the gravitational waves—ripples in spacetime produced by extreme cosmic events from black holes and neutron stars. This work uses observations from current ground-based detectors including LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA, as well as observations from future missions, such as the planned space-based observatory LISA. 

When speaking about Jess, students are generous in their praise of her patience and care for their learning, and making “deep space stuff just downright cool”. 

 

Congratulations Janis and Jess, for this incredible acknowledgment of your dedication to teaching and a shine on your contributions to science education in physics and astronomy.


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