Archak Purkayastha, a former graduate student from ICTS, has received an 'honorable mention' for the 2019 Geeta Udgaonkar Award for the best PhD thesis in physical science at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
Archak’s thesis titled ‘Transport in open quantum system’, done under the supervision of Prof. Abhishek Dhar and Prof. Manas Kulkarni, examined quantum systems coupled to quantum baths at multiple temperatures and compared different techniques used to calculate transport coefficients.
The Geeta Udgaonkar Award for the ‘Best Thesis’, was established in 1983 by Prof. B.M. Udgaonkar (Retired Professor, TIFR), in the memory of his late daughter. Initially, the award was presented only to PhD theses in physics but was later extended to all branches of science with the support of the TIFR Alumni Association.