ICTP Success

ICTP is pleased to share news about the success of its staff scientists and alumni. Here are the latest achievments:

• Hassan Azad, a former ICTP Senior Associate, is the first recipient of the Abdus Salam Shield of Honor. The award, which was established by the National Mathematics Society of Pakistan, recognizes Pakistani individuals who have dedicated their lives to serious research in mathematics. Dr. Azad was a member of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, Bonn, and is currently affiliated with the King Fahd University. His research interests are in the theory of algebraic groups and Lie groups, especially their algorithmic aspects. He is also interested in mathematics education.
• ICTP Staff Associate Christine Amory Mazaudier, a member of the Centre’s  Telecommunications/ICT for Development Laboratory (T/ICT4D), has received the International Marcel Nicolet Medal for Space Weather and Space Climate 2015, in a ceremony held during the European Space Weather Week held in Ostende, Belgium. Mazaudier was cited for “her outstanding efforts to structure the space weather community at an international level”.
• Mathematician and ICTP Simons Associate Alicia Dickenstein has won the 2015 TWAS Prize in the field of mathematics. The prize cites her “outstanding contribution to the understanding of discriminants.” Dickenstein is a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and is vice president of the International Mathematical Union.
• John Fredy Barrera Ramírez, an ICTP Junior Associate, was awarded the National Award of Scientific Merit by the Colombian Association for the Advance of Sciences. He also has won the Francisco José de Caldas Medal of University Excellence from the University of Antioquia, where he is currently an associate professor. Barrera Ramírez, whose research area is optics, received the 2014 International Commission for Optics (ICO)/ICTP Gallieno Denardo Award for his work on optical encryption in order to come up with ways to protect data.
• Riccardo Zecchina, a staff associate in ICTP’s Quantitative Life Sciences section and former head of ICTP’s Statistical Physics group, has received the 2016 Lars Onsager Prize given by the American Physical Society. Zecchina was cited “for groundbreaking work applying spin glass ideas to ensembles of computational problems, yielding both new classes of efficient algorithms and new perspectives on phase transitions in their structure and complexity.” Zecchina's research explores the intersections between statistical physics of disordered systems, discrete mathematics and computer science. He is a professor of theoretical physics at the Polytechnic University of Turin.