Physics post-doc Bodhitha Jayatilaka has won Fermilab's 2012 Tollestrup Award. The prize recognizes Jayatilaka's work with Duke physics professor Ashutosh Kotwal on the recent, most precise measurement of the mass of the W-boson, which was made at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago.

This measurement, based on quantum mechanics, makes a precise prediction for the mass of the Higgs boson, which physicists are searching for at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland.

The award is named for physicist Alvin Tollestrup, who was one of the founders of the experiment that discovered the top quark in 1995. Tollestrup presented his namesake award, including a $3500 cash prize, to Jayatilaka at the Fermilab Annual Users Meeting in June.