Postgraduates recognised for outstanding work in fields of Computer Science, Education and Physics

Top national and university prizes for students from St John's

Three researchers from St John’s have been awarded top academic prizes for excellence in their PhD studies.

Yoàv Montacute, a second-year PhD student in the Department of Computer Science and Technology, has been awarded The Alan Turing Enrichment Award for the academic year 2022-2023 as well as the best student paper prize at the most prestigious conference in his field of research.

Basma Hajir, a fourth-year PhD candidate in Education and Conflict, has been awarded the 2022 Faculty of Education Doctoral Student Excellence Award.

Danny Bennett, whose PhD was approved earlier this year, has won the Annual Sam Edwards PhD Thesis Prize: Theory of Condensed Matter Group – the prize for the best PhD thesis from the Institute of Physics (IOP).

Yoàv’s Enrichment Award is attached to a research programme that will see him conduct a project that he proposed to The Alan Turing Institute in London. In addition, one of Yoàv’s papers recently published in the proceedings of Computer Science Logic 2022 was selected for submission in a special issue of Logical Methods in Computer Science as an extended journal paper. 

In August, Yoàv was also awarded The Kleene Award at the annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science for best student paper.

The University of Cambridge Faculty of Education awarding panel voted unanimously to name Basma this year’s winner of the Doctoral Student Excellence Award due to her outstanding contributions to the field of education in conflict-affected settings. The panel was particularly impressed by her publication record at such as early stage in her career, as well as the global impact of her research and her desire to speak to a wider audience through blogs, inspiring other education researchers. She was also commended for engaging with research ethics in ‘novel and exciting ways’, which have affected the Faculty’s own professional and teaching practices.

Danny received the IOP’s annual award for best thesis in theoretical condensed matter physics in the UK and Ireland after being nominated by his PhD supervisor at the Department of Physics. Danny was formally announced as this year’s winner at the IOP’s Theory of Condensed Matter Theory Day at the University of Warwick on 16 June.

All three prize-winners have been sent letters of congratulations from Heather Hancock, Master of St John’s College.

Published 24/6/2022

Updated 31/8/2022

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