The Department of Physics & Astronomy has announced the recipients for this year’s graduate student awards. Four awards are given out annually: two for Distinguished Research, which covers outstanding research currently performed by graduate students in the department; one Research and Dissertation Award acknowledging the successful completion and defense of an excellent dissertation; and one Graduate Leadership and Service Award, which showcases the contributions of a graduate student leader for the betterment of the department. The research awards were presented to two Condensed Matter students, Resham Regmi (“for the growth of high-quality single crystals of altermagnetic materials”) and Nileema Sharma (“for atomic-scale visualization of putative spin-triplet superconductivity, Josephson coupling frustration, and the development of new scanning probe microscopy methods”). The distinguished dissertation award was given to Nathan Chalus in Condensed Matter “for innovative studies of skyrmions by small-angle neutron scattering, and especially collective skyrmion matter behavior under the influence of a magnon current”. Finally, the student service award was presented to Alex Thomas in Astronomy “for being a champion of the department, and for his encouragement, and infectious and steadfast passion and dedication to improving the lives of everyone around him”. If you see any of these students, be sure to congratulate and celebrate them and their accomplishments this week!
From left to right in the featured image: Prof. Anna Simon-Robertson, Resham Regmi, Nileema Sharma, Alex Thomas, Nathan Chalus, and Prof. Morten Eskildsen.
In high school, I scoffed at the idea of putting more effort into my humanities classes because I thought a smart person like me should pursue only the hardest subjects, and surely those were not them! In college, still interested in science but only pretending to have my priorities straight in a new world of opportunity, my scientific endeavor continued. I just wanted to do something challenging, without much thought as to why I was doing it.