Student and Postdoc Prizes and Awards
Recent Physics Graduate Wins UF’s AI Competition
Fire Neural Network, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup co-founded by Dr. Istvan Kereszy (UF Physics PhD Fall 2021) and Physics faculty Imre Bartos, won 1st Prize at the University of Florida’s AI Days Pitch Competition, selected out of 28 startup competitors.
Fire Neural Network (FNN) uses artificial intelligence, its proprietary lightning detector network, and data from the newest environmental satellites and other sensors to quickly locate wildfire ignition spots. The recognition comes on the heels of FNN’s recent success at the 2022 Big Idea Gator Business Plan Competition organized by the Warrington College of Business, where FNN won 1st Prize and the Special AI Prize
UF Physics Post Doc Receives Wilson Fellowship
Vishvas Pandey, a UF physics postdoc who has been collaborating on the Coherent CAPTAIN-Mills at Los Alamos (CCM) and Short-Baseline Near Detector at Fermilab (SBND) experiments with Professor Heather Ray, was recently awarded the Wilson Fellowship at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. With the Wilson Fellowship, Vishvas will take a position as Associate Scientist at Fermilab. Vishvas is the first UF postdoctoral researcher to receive this honor.
UF Physics Graduate Student Receives Onassis Foundation Scholarship
UF Physics graduate student Antonios Kyriazis has been awarded the 2022Â Onassis Foundation Scholarship. The Onassis Scholarship recognizes young Greek and international academics who are leading in areas of science, letters, and the arts. As part of the scholarship, Antonios will earn $10,800 over the course of three years to concentrate on his research into particle physics and cosmology of axion dark matter.
UF Physics Graduate Student Receives Top Award at Symposium
Tanmaya Mishra, UF Physics graduate student, received the top award in the category of Mathematical and Physical Sciences for his presentation at the Conference of Florida Graduate Schools 2022 Statewide Graduate Research Symposium, held at the University of Central Florida. Tanmaya collaborates with Professor Sergey Klimenko on applying machine learning to strategies for detecting gravitational waves using LIGO.
 UF Graduate Student Teaching Award Recipients
UF Physics is pleased to announce that three graduate students, Nathaniel Strauss, LingQin Xue and Ioannis Michaloliakos, received the UF Graduate Student Teaching Award for 2021-2022. Graduate teaching assistants make major contributions to teaching and learning at the University of Florida. Each academic year, the UF Graduate School recognizes the best, brightest, and most industrious of the University of Florida’s graduate teaching assistants for their work as instructors in the classroom and laboratory. These highly competitive awards recognize the very best graduate teaching assistants at the University of Florida.
UF Physics Undergraduate Student Receives 2022 CLAS Excellence Award
Bridgette Gifford is one of three graduating UF seniors named as winner of the 2022 CLAS Excellence Award. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) initiated these awards in 2017. They are given in various categories to students who embody the college’s standards of excellence.
Bridgette Gifford graduated last spring, completing a physics major, pre-med coursework, courses in computation and machine learning, and a minor in Music History and Ethnomusicology. Bridgette wrote a senior thesis with UF biophysics faculty member Prof. Purushottam Dixit. She is also the founder and first president of our undergraduate National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP) chapter at the University of Florida. The Gator Chapter of NSBP is only the fifth NSBP chapter in the United States.
