Two microbiology researchers from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, are being honored with an international award that recognizes their insights into aquatic microbes that are vital to Earth’s ecosystems.
The 2026 Daylight Award for Research is being presented to Distinguished Professor Steven Wilhelm, the Kenneth and Blaire Mossman Professor in the Department of Microbiology, and alumna Brittany N. Zepernick (PhD ’23), along with R. Michael McKay, director of the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research and a professor at the University of Windsor.
“With large-scale climatic changes already underway, the observations by these researchers provide novel mechanistic insights into how diatoms powered by daylight respond to ice loss and thus help to elucidate how they will fare in a climatically altered tomorrow, with major implications for planetary health and biodiversity,” wrote the international, interdisciplinary jury that selected this year’s laureates for the Daylight Awards.
The Daylight Academy brings together scientists, architects, engineers, and other professionals, promoting an integrated understanding of daylight in human life and the wider ecosystem. Daylight Awards, presented every two years, honor innovative work in research and in architecture.
“Daylight is more than illumination. It is the currency of life across the globe,” said Zepernick, now an assistant professor in the Department of Biology and Marine Biology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
“Almost all life on the planet depends on daylight; so much of the food we eat and the energy we burn started as light from the sun,” Wilhelm noted. “Subtle differences at the base of a food web can have significant differences at the top, shaping the ecology of the entire system.”
Wilhelm’s lab at UT is involved in research from the local level, investigating the causes of a toxic algae bloom in Knoxville’s Mead’s Quarry, to the global level, uncovering the drivers of a rich band of oxygen in the Sargasso Sea. The research focuses on understanding microbial communities to make life and lives better.
“We are excited to see the work of Drs. Wilhelm and Zepernick recognized internationally,” said Robert Hinde, executive dean and Herbert Family Dean’s Chair in the College of Arts and Sciences. “Their research shows how even the smallest organisms have lessons for the human world—in Tennessee and beyond.”
The Daylight Award recognizes work that is part of a long-term collaboration between UT and the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, focusing on phytoplankton thriving under the ice. The researchers discovered some freshwater diatoms have adaptations that allow them to persevere even when Lake Erie is not iced over, a scenario that models suggest will become more common in our changing climate.
The awards announcement notes that photosynthetic algae sustain most life on Earth, generating oxygen, sequestering carbon dioxide, supporting aquatic food webs, controlling nutrient cycles, and influencing water quality.
The 2026 Daylight Award for Architecture honors Momoyo Kaijima and Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, founders of the Japanese architectural firm Atelier Bow-Wow, for their inventive integration of daylight in buildings.
The Daylight Awards laureates will receive glass medallions at a ceremony May 27 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and a 100,000 euro grant.