On 28 July, the ALICE collaboration awarded the annual prizes for the best PhD theses at a ceremony held in the CERN Main Auditorium as part of the ALICE Physics Week. Since 2008, the collaboration has recognised the most outstanding PhD theses in the field of physics and instrumentation based on the excellence of the results obtained, the quality of the thesis manuscript and the importance of the contribution to the collaboration.
After reviewing all the theses submitted for the award, the ALICE Thesis Awards Committee selected five winners: Shreyasi Acharya (Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, HBNI, Kolkata, India), Mattia Faggin (University of and INFN, Padova, Italy), Dimitar Mihaylov (Technische Universität München, Germany), Jasper Parkkila (University of Jyväskylä, Finland) and Mike Sas (Utrecht University, Netherlands).
The winners gave flash talks on their thesis work and received prizes and mementos from the ALICE Deputy Spokesperson, Barbara Erazmus, with congratulations from the Chair of the Collaboration Board, Marielle Chartier, and the Chairs of the selection committee, Giuseppe Bruno and Philippe Crochet.
The winning theses are:
- Multiparticle production in proton–proton collisions at the LHC energies by Shreyasi Acharya
- Measurement of heavy-flavour decay electrons and heavy-flavour baryon production with ALICE experiment at LHC by Mattia Faggin
- Analysis techniques for femtoscopy and correlation studies in small collision systems and their applications to the investigation of p–Λ and Λ–Λ interactions with ALICE by Dimitar Mihaylov
- Quantifying the transport properties of quark–gluon plasma through measurement of higher harmonic flow and their non-linear response by Jasper Parkkila
- Illuminating Light by Mike Sas.
More on the ALICE collaboration’s website.