The Department of Physics is pleased to announce the inaugural winner of the Luk Kam-Biu Prize and the winners of the 2021 Paul and May Chu Undergraduate Research Awards. The Luk Kam-Biu Prize is awarded to Yan Yan CHAN. The Paul and May Chu Undergraduate Research Award is awarded to Ka Wun LEUNG, and Honorable Mentions are awarded to Yuk Lam KWOK and Wong To Anthony AU. The Prize recognizes and encourages research achievements in areas of experimentation, observation, or the analysis of experimental data. The Research Awards recognize physics undergraduate students for their outstanding achievements in research in any area.
Yan Yan CHAN
Kam-Biu Luk Prize
“For the development of a silicon-photomultiplier (SiPM)-based single-photon detector for ultra-fast astronomy”, under the supervision of Prof. George Smoot.
Yan Yan CHAN has worked on detector development under the supervision of Prof. George Smoot for two years prior to receiving the Prize. The main goal of this research is to develop a novel astronomical detector that can achieve temporal resolution up to sub-millisecond in order to capture unexplored optical transient astronomical signals, such as the optical counterpart of fast radio bursts. She has contributed to the mechatronic design of a cooling that will reduce the dark count noise of the SiPM sensor.
Ka Wun LEUNG
Paul and May Chu UG Research Award
“For the Experimental characterization of a superconducting high-entropy alloy,” under the supervision of Prof. Berthold Jäck.
Ka Wun Casey LEUNG has worked on experimental condensed matter physics under the supervision of Prof. Berthold Jäck since August 2021. His research is aimed at characterizing isotropic s-wave superconductivity in high entropy alloys by analyzing the magnetic susceptibility to determine the coherence length and penetration depth. This work is summarized in a preprint arXiv:2111.11013.
Yuk Lam KWOK
Paul and May Chu UG Research Award, Honorable Mention
“For the numerical calculation of electronic properties of a typical two-dimensional material graphene without and with spin-orbital coupling”, under the supervision of Prof. Junwei Liu.
Yuk Lam KWOK has worked on the study of band structure of materials under the supervision of Prof. Liu Junwei since February 2021. She used a tight-binding model to calculate the Hamiltonian for both two-dimensional and three-dimensional materials. The calculation was implemented on Python with the target develop a package in the future that is applicable to more general cases.
Wang To Anthony AU
Paul and May Chu UG Research Award, Honorable Mention
“For the development of a method to measure the neutrino mass using the data of galaxy clusters” under the co-supervision of Prof. Kirill PROKOFIEV and Prof. Thomas BROADHURST (University of the Basque Country).
Wang To Anthony AU has worked on neutrino cosmology since Feb 2021 under the supervision of Prof. Kirill Prokofiev at HKUST. He made technical contributions in pioneering a new method to measure neutrino mass by surveying the gravitational effects of neutrinos on the formation of galaxy clusters. This research has the potential to estimate neutrino mass at a higher accuracy.
