Difference between revisions of "Award for the best PhD thesis"

Revision as of 10:35, 30 June 2014

Every Year SISSA awards 3 prizes of the amount of € 1.000,00 each for the best Ph.D. thesis defended at SISSA in each scientific field:

• Mathematics
• Physics
• Neuroscience

Rules

Participation to the 2014 edition is limited to candidates who obtained the Ph.D title at SISSA during the period 1 March 2013 – 28 February 2014.

Deadline: 8 September 2014

Bando in italiano

Modulo in italiano

Announcement in English

Application form in English

Previous Winners

2013

Mathematics

Flavia Poma

Title: Gromov-Witten theory of tame Deligne-Mumford stacks in mixed characteristic

Supervisors: A. Vistoli and B. Fantechi

Neuroscience

Maddalena Delma Caiati

Title: Activity-dependent regulation of GABA release at immature mossy fibers-CA3 synapses: role of the Prion protein

Supervisor: E. Cherubini

Physics

Luca Tubiana

Title: Equilibrium and kinetic properties of knotted ring polymers: a computational approach

Supervisor: C. Micheletti

2012

Mathematics

Davide Barilari now Post-Doc @ Ecole Polytechnique, Paris (France)

Title: Invariants, volumes and heat kernels in sub-Riemannian geometry

Supervisors: A. Agrachev and U. Boscain

The thesis of Dr. Barilari is devoted to important problems of geometry, measure theory and analysis in sub-Riemannian spaces. Two of results obtained by Barilari answer classical open questions: the first concerns regularity properties of the Hausdorff's measure and the second concerns the relation between the small time asymptotic of the sub-Riemannian heat kernel on the diagonal and geometric curvature-type invariants. This is indeed an extremely good mature work.

Neuroscience

Claudia Civai now Post-Doc @ Minnesota University - Dept. of Economics, USA

Title: More Equal than Others: The neural basis of unfairness and inequality perception in the Ultimatum Game

Supervisor: R. Rumiati

The thesis contains four studies (3 of which already published in high ranked journals) in a new field of neuroscience investigating the neural bases of economical decision making. The external examiners (Prof. Alan Sanfey, University of Arizona & Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Nijmegen, and Prof. Stefano Cappa, Università San Raffaele, Milan) were very impressed by her experimental and theoretical work. Immediately after her PhD defense, Dr. Civai started a three year postdoctoral contract to work at the University at Minnesota in collaboration with Prof Aldo Rustichini, a world leading figure in neuroeconomics.

Physics

Michele Burrello now Post-Doc @ Universiteit Leiden - Institut Lorentz, Germany

Title: Topological quantum computation, anyons and non-abelian gauge potentials

Supervisors: G. Mussardo and A. Trombettoni

For his outstanding work on non-abelian anyon physics, in particular for implementing a very efficient search algorithm of a single q-bit quantum gate based on braiding properties of the so-called Fibonacci anyons.

2011

Mathematics

Francesco Solombrino now Post-Doc @ Center for Mathematics, Technische Universität München, Germany

Title: Rescaled viscosity solutions of a quasistatic evolution problem in non-associative plasticity

Supervisor: G. Dal Maso

Francesco Solombrino's thesis contains very interesting and very difficult mathematical results on a specific model for elasto-plastic materials used in soil mechanics. More in general, the ideas and the techniques developed in the thesis provide an important contribution to the study of quasistatic evolution problems, a field that has attracted the activity of several international research groups.

Neuroscience

Liuba Papeo now Post-Doc @ Cognitive Neuropsychology Laboratory, Harvard University, USA

Title: The Tie between Action and Language Is in Our Imagination

Supervisor: R. Rumiati

The thesis entitled contains five distinct experimental studies. Three of them have been published, one has been sent to a Journal and one will be submitted shortly. Furthermore, a review article has been completed. All those works have already received many citations. Besides having used different methodologies (fMRI, TMS and neuropsychology,) in her thesis, Dr. Papeo has also carried out very good theoretical work. Professor Caramazza (Harvard and University of Trento) and Professor Peter Hagoort (director of the Donders Institute in Neijmegen, Netherlands), were the external examiners, and highly appreciated her work.

Physics

Raffaello Potestio now Post-Doc @ Theory Group, Max-Planck-Institut für Polymerforschung Mainz, Germany

Title: Coarse-grained modelling of protein structure and internal dynamics: comparative methods and applications

Supervisor: C. Micheletti

For outstanding results in the numerical characterization of structure and dynamical properties of proteins, as testified by the independent selection of one of his papers by the F1000 committee: In this intriguing paper, the authors compared the sequences of homologous proteins. In particular, they chose proteins in which some homologs contain knots while others did not, enabling Potestio et al. to tease out features that may be required for knotting.