Don McKenzie Paul Thesis Prize
Recognising a thesis describes notable development of neutron instrumentation or techniques or uses neutrons to address a scientific challenge.
Details
| Status | Closed |
|---|---|
| Career stage | PhD student |
Awarded by the Neutron Scattering Group
The group supports and develops the UK neutron community in a rapidly changing global neutron landscape. It promotes and represents UK neutron scattering externally and provides links to and from UK-funded neutron sources and the European Neutron Scattering Association.
Winners
Jennifer Graham, former PhD student at the ILL and Birmingham University and currently at PSI, has been awarded this year鈥檚prize for her 鈥済round-breaking contributions to the study of frustrated magnets using neutron polarisation analysis combined with novel data analysis methodologies, and especially her discovery of a spiral spin liquid phase in LiYbO2."
The Don McKenzie Paul Thesis Prize 2023 is awarded to Harrison Laurent from the University of Leeds for his work on the effect of the organic osmolyte TMAO in extremophile organisms in high salinity and high-pressure water environments 鈥� and the ensuing insight into how extremophiles survive on Earth and how they may survive on other planets.
About this prize
The Don McKenzie Paul Thesis Prize is awarded in recognition of a successfully examined PhD or DPhil thesis in which the use of neutrons plays a significant role in addressing a scientific challenge, or the thesis describes notable development of neutron instrumentation or techniques.
The award is coordinated by the Neutron Scattering Group, a joint Interest Group of the Institute of Physics and 九州影院.
Nominations cannot be directly from the candidate, but can be from anyone else, including their supervisor or examiner. In order to be eligible the examiners must have approved any corrections and recommended the award of a PhD or DPhil, the thesis must have been submitted within the last 12/24 months of the call deadline, and the thesis awarding institution must be based in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland.
Please complete the .
Please note that the form requires the details of a second nominator who will be sent an invitation to submit a supporting statement upon submission of the nomination form. Therefore please allow time for this statement to be provided when considering nominating.
The panel to judge the prize will be composed of the Neutron Scattering Group committee, with external experts asked to join the panel to contribute expertise not covered by the committee. Committee members with a potential conflict of interest (e.g. supervisor/former supervisor of the candidate, or from the same department as the candidate) will not be involved in assessing that candidate鈥檚 nomination.
The panel will assess the impact of each candidate鈥檚 thesis, based on the evidence put forward by the nominators in terms of the following:
- Quality - outstanding level of the written thesis.
- Originality - stemming from new development or new use of neutrons.
- Impact/significance - perceived economic/cultural/societal/educational importance of the work carried out using neutrons or developing neutron instrumentation or techniques.
- Rigour/performance - outstanding level of development and performance of the student.
- Inter-disciplinarity - multiple neutron techniques utilised - and/or relation to other complementary techniques.
Metrics (journal impact factor and citations) will be of minor importance given the cross-disciplinary nature of the field of neutron work.
The prize is named after Don McKenzie Paul (1953-2019), a condensed matter scientist and professor at the University of Warwick known for his work in the area of Neutron Scattering.
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