The IPA Rahul Basu Award for best thesis in HEP (2024)

The award ceremony for the Indian Physics Association administered Rahul Basu Award for the best thesis in HEP was held at Banaras Hindu University on   23rd December 2024. Theses which were submitted in the period 2022 to 2024 were considered for the award. The award committee consisted of:

Award Committee: Sunanda Banerjee, Ghanashyam Date, Amol Dighe, Diptimoy Ghosh. Debashis Ghoshal, Rohini Godbole, Sourendu Gupta, Neelima Gupte, Lokesh Kumar, James Libby, Bedanga Mohanty, Subhendra Mohanty, Sunil Mukhi, and Seema Sharma

The following theses were selected for the 2022-2024 award by the award committee. These were:

Winners:

========

Dr. Ahmadullah Zahed, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

Thesis Title: New tools to constrain EFTs and CFTs.

Dr. Ashish Pandav, National Institute of Science Education and

Research, Bhubaneswar and Homi Bhabha National Institute,

Mumbai

Thesis title: Probing the QCD Phase Diagram via Net-proton Number Fluctuation at RHIC.

Runners up / Honourable Mention:

==========================

Dr. Sunil Jaiswal, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research,

Mumbai

Thesis title: Exploring New Regimes of Relativistic

Hydrodynamics.

Dr. Fahim Varsi, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

Thesis title: Measurement of the energy spectrum and composition of cosmic rays by the GRAPES-3 experiment.

All four awardees presented short talks on their work. The session was co-ordinated by Dr Lokesh Kumar, one of the first two winners of this award, in person.  Prof, Bedangadas Mohanty presented a short online introduction on the  award, the selection procedure and the past winners. We had a memorial session on Prof. Rohini Godbole, who was crucial in setting up this award, and was one of the most knowledgeable and hardworking members of the award committee. 

The award committee put in long hours to pare down the nominations down to the winning four, despite their super busy schedules. Many thanks are due to their efforts and expertise, which has always ensured the quality of this award. The chairs, Prof. Bedangadas Mohanty and Prof. Debashis Ghoshal carried out superb co-ordination and kept every one on schedule. Special thanks to them, and also to the Indian Physics Association for their support of this award. The awardees are presenting short summaries of their theses, which will be published in the IPA journal, Physics News. We will be putting up the link here. We hope this will inspire future generations of students to work of this quality.

This blog post is by Neelima Gupte and Sumathi Rao.