Prizes & Awards

This page highlights some of the recent recognition that our postgraduate students have achieved, both from Warwick-based awards that recognise research and teaching excellence, and from national and international organisations.

Warwick Prizes for Outstanding Doctoral Theses:

	Faculty of Science Thesis Prize	Springer Thesis Prize	Winton Prize for Astrophysics	MSc thesis prize
2023	Matthew Pearce "Applied-magnetic-field studies of f-electron materials" Supervisor: Paul Goddard	Ross Hunter "Precise measurements of the W boson’s mass and lepton flavour universality, and trigger development with the LHCb experiment at CERN" Supervisor: Mika Vesterinen	Sahl Rowther "The Evolution of Gravitationally Unstable Protoplanetary Discs: From Instability to Stability" Supervisor: Farzana Meru	Caitlyn Cullen "A Search for Non-Transiting Planets with Optical Phase Curves from the TESS Mission (MSc)" Supervisor: Dan Bayliss
2022	Sam Holt Supervisor: Geetha Balakrishnan	Arnau Brossa Gonzalo Supervisor: Tim Gershon	Benjamin Cooke Supervisor: Don Pollacco
2021	Samuele Ferracin "Devising accreditation protocols for near-term quantum computing devices" Supervisor: Dr. Animesh Datta	James Gott "Defects in Self-Catalysed III-V Nanowires" Supervisor: Prof. Ana Sanchez	Elena Cukanovaite "3D atmospheric models of helium-dominated atmosphere white dwarfs" Supervisor: Dr. Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay
2020	Ben Chapman "Ion cyclotron emission from energetic ion populations in fusion plasmasLink opens in a new window" Supervisors: Profs. Richard Dendy and Sandra Chapman and Connor Mosley (also wins the Springer Prize, see right)	Connor Mosley "Enhanced Polarisation Control and Extreme Electric Fields: Advances in Terahertz Spectroscopy Applied to Anisotropic Materials and Magnetic Phase Transitions" Supervisor: Dr James Lloyd-Hughes	George William King "Observations of Exoplanetary Systems at X-ray Wavelengths" Supervisor: Prof. Peter Wheatley
2019	Ming-Min Yang "Photoelectric Processes in Ferroelectric/Multiferroic Materials" Supervisor: Prof. Marin Alexe	Eduardo Mendive-Tapia "Ab-initio Theory of Magnetic Ordering: Electronic Origin of Pair- and Multi-Spin Interactions" Supervisor: Prof. Julie Staunton	Petra Kohutova "Magnetohydrodynamic oscillations in solar coronal rain” Supervisor: Dr Erwin Verwichte and Odette Toloza Castillo "White dwarfs: perfect laboratories for understanding non-radial pulsations and revealing secrets on the single degenerate pathway towards Supernova type Ia" Supervisor: Prof. Boris Gaensicke
2018	Michele Failla "Rashba spin-splitting and terahertz quantum Hall effect for heavy holes in strained germanium quantum wells" Supervisor: Dr. James Lloyd-Hughes and Jonathan Peters "Structure and ferroelectricity at the atomic level in perovskite oxides" Supervisor: Prof. Ana Sanchez	Daniel O'Hanlon "Studies of CP-violation in charmless three-body b-hadron decays" Supervisor: Prof. Tim Gershon	Mark Holland "The properties of cool DZ white dwarfs" Supervisor: Prof. Boris Gaensicke
2017	Haiyuan Wang "Density Functional Theory Investigations of MnSb(0001)/GaAs(111)B" Supervisor: Dr Gavin Bell		Tom Louden "The composition and dynamics of exoplanet atmospheres" Supervisor: Prof. Peter Wheatley
2016	David Chapman "Probing the dynamic response of dense matter with x-ray Thomson scattering", Tom Machon "Aspects of Geometry and Topology in Liquid Crystalline Phases", and Davide Michieletto "Topological Interactions in Ring Polymers" were joint winners of the Faculty of Science Thesis prize [news article].

Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence (WATE):

2019. Congratulations to Richard Henshaw of the Soft Condensed Matter and Biophysics group, who has been announced as a 2019 winner of a Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence for Postgraduates who Teach (WATE PGR). James Gott of the Microscopy group was named as a commendee.

2018. Congratulations to Daniel Mayoh, who was commended for a WATE PGR.

Awards from national and international organisations:

Year	Award
2019	Eduardo Mendive-Tapia (Theory Group) was awarded a runner-up prize in the Sam Edwards Prize, awarded by the Institute of Physics Theory of Condensed Matter Group, for his thesis entitled "Ab-initio Theory of Magnetic Ordering: Electronic Origin of Pair- and Multi- Spin Interactions"
2018	Connor Mosley (Condensed Matter: Ultrafast & THz group) was awarded a best student poster award at the UK THz Workshop (December 2018), in the Department of Physics, University of Warwick, for his poster "Broadband, rotatable terahertz polarisation control for the spectroscopy of anisotropic materials". Guy Stimpson (Condensed Matter: Diamond research group) was awarded the Conference talk prize at the 70th De Beers Diamond Conference for his presentation on "Spin decoherence of nitrogen vacancy centres in high purity nanodiamonds".
2017	Claire Thring (Condensed Matter: Ultrasonics group) has been awarded the R.W.B. Stephens Prize at the 2017 International Congress on Ultrasonics, which was held in Honolulu, Hawaii, Dec 18-20th 2017. The prize is given in recognition of outstanding work in ultrasonics and the excellent presentation of the results, and is sponsored by Elsevier and the journal Ultrasonics. Angelo Frangeskou (Condensed Matter: Diamond research group) was awarded the Student Best Poster Award at the Materials Research Society's Spring Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, for presenting about "Pure nanodiamonds for vacuum levitated optomechanics".
2016	Andrew Goldsborough (Theory Group) was awarded a runner-up prize in the IOP Computational Physics Group thesis competition, for his thesis entitled "Tensor Networks and Geometry for the Modelling of Disordered Quantum Many-Body Systems." Daniel Craik was awarded the 2016 LHCb Thesis Awards for his thesis entitled "A measurement of the CKM angle γ from studies of DKπ Dalitz plots" (CERN-THESIS-2015-285), and for contributions to EvtGen and LAURA++
2014	Tom Goffrey (CFSA) was awarded a runner-up prize in the IOP Computational Physics Group thesis competition, for his thesis entitled "A Cylindrical Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) Code." Rafael Silva Coutinho was awarded the 2014-2015 LHCb UK PhD Prize for his thesis entitled "Studies of charmless three-body b-hadron decays at LHCb" (CERN-THESIS-2015-117) Leopoldo Carbajal-Gomez was awarded the IOP Plasma Physics Meeting Poster Prize for P.35 Ion cyclotron emission and the nonlinear physics of the magnetoacoustic cyclotron instability of fusion-born ions, L. Carbajal-Gomez, with S. C. Chapman, R. O. Dendy and J. W. S. Cook, Presented at the 41st IOP Plasma Physics Conference, London, 14-17 April 2014
2012	David Duncan was awarded the Woodruff Thesis prize by the Thin Films and Surfaces Group of the IOP, for the best PhD thesis completed by a student member of the group, for his thesis "Adsorbate structure determination using energy scanned photoelectron diffraction".