PPD Thesis Award

The Particle Physics Division (PPD) will award one PPD thesis award to a student who has received a Ph.D. degree in Experimental or Phenomenological Particle Physics from a Canadian University in the current calendar year.

The award consists of:

  • 500$ from the PPD.
  • Invitation to give a 30 min invited talk at the upcoming CAP Congress (sponsored by TRIUMF or by the PPD to a maximum cost of 1000$).
  • (if agreed upon) Publication of a two-page summary of the thesis work in an issue of Physics in Canada.

A one-page summary describing the competition results shall be posted by the thesis committee chair on the PPD website. Further details on the rules, eligibility and nomination procedures can be found below.
Year Best Thesis Author Thesis Title
2023 Not Awarded
2022 Dominique Trischuk (UBC) “Displaced Vertex Search For Heavy Neutral Leptons Using The ATLAS Detector”
2021 Stephen Weber (Carleton) “Measurements of Z boson production in association with two jets using the ATLAS Run-II dataset”
2020 Savino Longo (Victoria) “First Application of CsI(Tl) Pulse Shape Discrimination at an e+e− Collider to Improve Particle Identification at the Belle II Experiment”
2019 Elder Pinzon Guerra (York) “Measurement of Pion-Carbon Cross Sections at DUET and Measurement of Neutrino Oscillation Parameters at the T2K Experiment”
2018 Patrick deNiverville “Searching for Hidden Sector Dark Matter with Fixed Target Neutrino Experiments”
2017 Not Awarded
2016 Patrick De Perio (Toronto) “Joint Three-Flavour Oscillation Analysis of νμ Disappearance and νe Appearance in the T2K Neutrino Beam.”
2015 Not Awarded – too few entries
AWARD  RUBRIC

Click here to view and download the PPD Thesis Award rubric. 

DEADLINES

To be considered for the award, the documentation below has to be submitted to the chair of the PPD currently Seyda Ipek (sipek@physics.carleton.ca), with “PPD THESIS AWARD” in the subject heading:

  • A copy of the thesis in electronic format.
  • A letter of nomination by the thesis supervisor. The nomination letter should describe in detail the contributions of the student to the research work and contain an approximately 3-4 sentence laudation summarising these key accomplishments. This laudation would be used to announce the prize (if awarded) and posted on the webpage.
  • A recommendation letter by the external reviewer on the applicant’s thesis committee.
  • A letter from the Department Head (or University Dean) indicating that the thesis has been formally accepted by the University.

The deadline for submission is February 15th. The prize recipient will be notified on March 31st and the announcement to the PPD will be made shortly thereafter.

REQUIREMENTS

Both the supervisor and the nominee must be members of CAP and PPD. The PPD competition will run in parallel to the DNP and DTP competitions. Simultaneous submissions to PPD, DNP and DTP competitions are not allowed. Theses in particle physics phenomenology can be submitted to either the DTP or PPD prizes. Theses in formal theory should be submitted to the DTP prize.

If less than three submissions are received, no competition will be held in that year and all submissions received will be considered in the following calendar year. No draw (tie) is allowed.

PPD THESIS AWARD COMMITTEE

The PPD Thesis Award Committee shall be chaired by the PPD Vice-Chair. The membership of the Committee shall also include two additional members appointed by the Committee Chair according to areas/languages of the theses submitted. The PPD chair and vice-chair will nominate 3 Ph.D. theses for review based on the reference letters from the supervisor and the external examiner.
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