The award was created "to recognize and enhance outstanding achievement by a woman physicist in the early years of her career, and to provide opportunities for her to present these achievements to others through public lectures."
Campbell was chosen for "her pioneering contributions to the study of superfluidity in atomic-gas Bose-Einstein condensates, realizing atomic analogs to superconducting and superfluid liquid circuitry, including the use of weak links to create the first closed-circuit atomtronic devices."