Waseem Bakr, a Princeton University assistant professor of physics, is one of 18 researchers nationwide to receive a 2016 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering for promising early-career researchers from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Bakr, who will receive a five-year, $875,000 grant, uses optical microscopy to study atomic and molecular gases cooled to a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero. This research illuminates the behavior of electrons in a wide range of materials including superconductors and quantum magnets.