Lisbon, Oxford, Imperial College lead EPS-PPD awards
The University of Lisbon (through IST), Oxford University and Imperial College (both from the UK) lead the ranking of the prestigious Best Thesis Prize in Plasma Physics, with five students from each institution having received the award since its first edition in 2005.
Every year, the Plasma Physics Division of the European Physical Society (EPS) grants its PhD Research Award, a prize that recognizes truly outstanding research achievements associated with a PhD study in the broad field of plasma physics. Up to four prizes are given annually to young scientists from the 38 European countries associated with the EPS. The winners have the opportunity to give an oral presentation of their works at the annual European Physical Society Conference on Plasma Physics.
Up to know, the five recipients from IST/ULisboa are:
- In 2005, Bruno Gonçalves for his thesis on Statistical Properties of Turbulence: a New Approach to Characterize Transport in Fusion Plasmas
- In 2013, Frederico Fiúza for his thesis on Multi-scale PIC modeling of high energy density scenarios: from laboratory to astrophysics
- In 2020, Rogério Jorge (EPFL/University of Lisbon) for his thesis on A moment-based model for plasma dynamics of arbitrary collisionality
- In 2021, Mario Galletti for his thesis on High contrast front-end for a petawatt laser system designed for electron acceleration & High intensity laser-matter applications towards advanced compact particle accelerators
- In 2023, Luis Gil for his thesis on Stationary ELM-free H-mode in ASDEX Upgrade
The second place of the ranking in terms of prizes belongs to EPFL (Switzerland) with four prizes, while five institutions have been awarded three times: Queen’s University Belfast (UK), Technical University of Eindhoven (Netherlands), Paris-Saclay (France), and LULI (France), and the University of York (UK).
