Walter Kohn Prize Ceremony 2023

The 2022 Walter Kohn Prize for quantum-mechanical materials and molecular modeling has been awarded to Debashree Ghosh, of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science in Kolkata, India. The prize recognises her "pathbreaking work in developing novel quantum chemical tools for materials design and the study of biological function. Combining techniques from physics, chemistry and biology, her work has made important advances in our understanding of strongly correlated materials and complex biological systems."

The ceremony will be held on 12 January 2023 at 15:30, at ICTP, during the Centre’s 21st International Workshop on Computational Physics and Materials Science: Total Energy and Force Methods and will include an invited talk by Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann.

Debashree Ghosh earned her MS degree in chemical sciences from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 2005, and her PhD degree in chemistry at Cornell University in 2010. She is currently a professor at the School of Chemical Sciences, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science. Her research focuses on the development and application of methods to understand photophysical processes in biological and condensed phases.

The Walter Kohn Prize was established in March 2016 by ICTP and the Quantum ESPRESSO Foundation (QEF) in honour of Chemistry Nobel Laureate Walter Kohn, a leading condensed matter physicist who developed density functional theory (DFT), a method that drastically reduces the amount of computing power needed to model the properties of complex materials, without compromising the accuracy of a model’s simulations. DFT has already had a big impact on a wide variety of fields, including chemistry, molecular physics, medicine and engineering. It also has opened the door to contributions from scientists from disadvantaged countries who have no access to huge supercomputers, due to its low computing costs and the wide availability of open source modeling software.

The prize is awarded jointly by ICTP and the QEF every two years, but was not awarded in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.

All are welcome to attend. Light refreshments will be served in the lobby after the event.

The Ceremony will also be livestreamed.