Best PhD Poster Prize for Farzaneh Ostovarpour
The second edition of IST-PhysFront’26 – Physics Frontier Symposium, organised by the Department of Physics at Instituto Superior Técnico (DF-IST), brought together approximately 400 participants at Técnico Innovation Center, recognising outstanding student research across the three study cycles in Physics.
The IPFN PhD student Farzaneh Ostovarpour received the Best PhD Poster Prize for her work on “Surface kinetic modeling of ozone-assisted methane oxidation over Coβ catalyst: validation against experimental data under humid conditions''. Supervised by Vasco Guerra, Full Professor at Técnico and researcher in IPFN’s N-PRiME group, her work combines physics, chemistry and modelling.
“Methane is very harmful to the atmosphere. Therefore, we want to explore and develop ways of reducing even these diluted amounts of methane,” Farzaneh explained.
For her, the award is “special”, both because she was surprised to receive the distinction and because of the collaboration that made the work possible. “I am really fortunate to have two excellent supervisors, as well as colleagues from the experimental and chemistry fields. They broaden my perspective on chemistry because my background was purely in physics, but now it is a whole new world for me.”
Beyond the poster competition, IPFN was also represented across the main scientific sessions of the event. As part of the Research Highlights session, Dr Philipp Kempski, Assistant Professor of Physics at Técnico and researcher in the Group of Astrophysical Plasmas (GAP) at IPFN, was an invited speaker, presenting the lecture “The Long Way Round: How Cosmic Rays Race along Turbulent Magnetic Fields and Shape Astrophysical Systems”.
His research explores the origin and transport of cosmic rays, the most energetic particles in the Universe, using simulations of turbulent magnetised plasmas on some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers alongside high-power laser experiments. This work investigates how cosmic rays interact with astrophysical plasmas and shape the evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes.
The Outstanding Student Talks session also featured João Biu, a PhD student in GAP, who presented his work on astrophysical plasmas, entitled “Applying deep learning techniques to develop reduced models for collisionless astrophysical shocks”. João Biu’s research combines large-scale kinetic simulations with model-discovery techniques and deep learning to develop new models capable of describing plasma dynamics in collisionless environments of astrophysical relevance.
The IST-PhysFront symposium thus continues to provide a platform for showcasing cutting-edge research developed at IPFN and the Department of Physics at Técnico, fostering direct engagement between students, faculty and researchers across different fields.
Photo: Instituto Superior Técnico
