Sloan Science in Cinema Prize: Oppenheimer

Jennifer Lame attended Wesleyan University, where she studied under documentary editor Jacob Bricca. She started as an apprentice on films like Peter Jackson‘s The Lovely Bones and Sidney Lumet‘s Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead. Lame quickly ascended the ranks as a feature and television assistant editor. Frances Ha was Lame‘s first feature editing credit and continued to collaborate with director Noah Baumbach on his releases, While We’re Young, Mistress America, Meyerowitz Stories and Marriage Story (nominated for a 2020 Eddie Award). Lame also edited Manchester By The Sea, for which she was nominated for an ACE Eddie, BAFTA and Indie Spirit Award. She joined forces with Ari Aster to edit Hereditary, and provided additional editing on Midsommar. Lame also edited on Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever for Marvel. Lame previously worked with Christopher Nolan on Tenet and has recently teamed up with Nolan again on his 2023 film, Oppenheimer. Most recently Lame collaborated with Darren Aronofsky, to create the immersive movie experience, Postcard From Earth, at the Las Vegas Sphere.

I was born in San Bernardino and lived in Southern California until I was 12, when my family relocated to Charlottesville, Virginia. I received my Bachelor of Fine Arts from Texas Christian University, where I majored in painting, minored in photography, and played for the TCU women’s soccer team.

The summer before heading off to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to pursue my master’s in painting, I had a course-altering conversation with Jack Fisk, whose daughter, Schuyler Fisk, is a dear friend of mine. We spoke about designing films, as he too came from a fine arts background, and he encouraged me to give it a try before heading off to grad school. I joined Jack as his assistant on There Will Be Blood and continued to work with him as an art director over the course of the next 10 years, before I began designing on my own. It was through Jack that I also met David Crank, and coming up under Jack and David was the most incredible experience.

I currently reside in Livingston, Montana, with my husband, Producer Charlie Skinner; our daughter, Sadie (4.5 years); and our English Shepherd, Rye.

Richard King is an award-winning Sound Designer/Supervising Sound Editor. King has won four Academy Awards for Dunkirk, Inception, The Dark Knight, and Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World and was nominated for 2 others—Interstellar and War of the Worlds. In addition, he has won three Bafta Awards for Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World, Inception, and Dunkirk as well as four MPSE awards and the MPSE Career Achievement Award.

King has had the good fortune to work with many world class directors, including Sam Shepard, Nicolas Roeg, M. Night Shymalan, Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson, William Friedkin, Peter Weir, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, Patty Jenkins, and Denis Villeneuve.

His most recent credits include Oppenheimer, and the upcoming films Maestro and Dune: Part Two.

Benjamin Safdi received his undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder, a Master of Advanced Study from Cambridge University, as a Churchill Scholar, and his PhD from Princeton University in 2014. He was then a Pappalardo Fellow in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology until 2017, when he started as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Safdi moved to LBNL in 2020 and then to UC Berkeley in 2021. He received the Department of Energy Early Career Award in 2018 and the IUPAP C11 Young Scientist Prize in Particles and Fields in 2020.