Xuan Tan NGUYEN
Paul and May Chu Undergraduate Research Award

“For contributions to the understanding of the temporal coherence of electron sources in electron microscopy”under the supervision of Prof. Michael S. Altman.

Xuan Tan NGUYEN worked on the theory of image formation in electron microscopy under the supervision of Prof. Michael S. Altman for two years beginning in Summer 2021. In his award- winning work, Tan updated the existing theory to accurately describe effects caused by the partial temporal coherence of field emission electron sources commonly used in state-of-the-art instruments. The new insights that this work provided have important implications for optimizing image resolution and for performing advanced image analysis. Tan is the lead author on a paper about this work published in a Q1 topical journal, Ultramicroscopy 252, 113751 (2023).

Zhiwei HE
Paul and May Chu Undergraduate Research Award, Honorable Mention

“For contributions to research of the High-Temperature-Superconductor YBCO based on NV Centers”under the supervision of Prof. Yang Sen.

Zhiwei HE worked on experimental condensed matter physics under the supervision of Prof. Sen Yang since Summer 2021. Zhiwei spearheaded research on pressure driven quantum phase transitions in solid state materials using color centers in diamond. Using a low temperature confocal microscopy system that he built, Zhiwei determined a detailed phase diagram of superconductivity in YBCO under pressure. The rich information obtained in his work advances the understanding of the detailed mechanism of superconductivity in this important material.

Cheuk Kan Kelvin YUE
Paul and May Chu Undergraduate Research Award, Honorable Mention

“For contributions to validating theoretical calculations with the Monte Carl tool MCFM for the measurement of the W boson mass”under the supervision of Dr. David Walter (CERN).

Cheuk Kan Kelvin YUE undertook high energy physics research at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) under the supervision of Dr. David Walter during Summer 2023. In this project, Kelvin established codes to validate theoretical calculations performed using the “Monte Carlo for FeMtobarn Processes” (MCFM) numerical tool. Importantly, he identified a critical bug in this public program, which is used extensively for calculations on hadronic processes. The validated MCFM predictions can then be employed to reweight Monte Carlo samples, enabling a precise measurement of the W boson mass.