Jose Nicasio, Gaurav Khairnar, Yanyan Zheng and Ali Sarikhani, shown from left, are winners of the 29^th annual Schearer Prize for graduate research. It is held in memory of Laird D. Schearer, the department’s first Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Physics, and rewards graduate students for outstanding research performed during the course of their graduate study.

Khairnar won first prize for his research titled “Phases and phase transitions of the disordered q-state quantum clock model.”

Second prize went to Sarikhani and Zheng. Sarikhani’s research is titled “Transparency and room temperature ferromagnetism in diluted magnetic polycrystalline Zn1−xCrxTe non-oxide II-VI semiconductor compounds.” Zheng’s research is titled “An optically targeted search for gravitational waves emitted by core-collapse supernovae during the third observing runs of advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo.”

Nicasio received third prize for his work titled “Dispersion of ultra-relativistic tardyonic and tachyonic wave packets on cosmic scales.”