Four University of Arkansas graduate students will compete for a prestigious prize next week as the university hosts the 76th annual Physical Electronics Conference.

The conference, which begins on Monday, provides an annual forum for the dissemination and discussion of novel and fundamental theoretical and experimental research in the physics, chemistry, biology and engineering of surfaces and interfaces.

Graduate students with theses or dissertations in these areas will compete for the Wayne B. Nottingham Prize, which is awarded to the best student paper presented at the conference. The U of A’s Benjamin A. Gray won the Nottingham Prize in 2013, becoming the first from the university to capture the award.

This year, four of the 20 Nottingham finalists are U of A graduate students.

Photo by University Relations

Photo by University Relations

“These four represent the top University of Arkansas students in the area of surface and interface science,” said Paul Thibado, professor of physics at the U of A who chaired the local organizing committee for the annual meeting. “The Nottingham Prize represents a seminal honor since many Nottingham winners have gone on to become leaders in the field of surface science.”

The U of A Nottingham Prize nominees will present their research on Wednesday. The students and their advisers:

  • Harpreet Kaur, physics; Jiali Li, associate professor, physics
  • Xiaoran Liu, physics; Jak Chakhalian, professor, physics
  • Ahmad Nusir, electrical engineering; Omar Manasreh, professor, electrical engineering
  • Raymond Walter, physics and mathematical sciences; Laurent Bellaiche, Distinguished Professor, physics

The full conference schedule can be found here. Most of the conference activities will take place at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for Enterprise Development.

Invited speakers for the conference are Jochen Mannhart, director of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany; Agnes Barthelemy, senior member of the Institut Universitaire of France and the joint laboratory CNRS/Thales, an affiliate of the University of Paris-Sud; and Jonathan W. Thibado, principal engineer at Intel Corp.

Previous conference hosts include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, Bell Laboratories, Stanford University, Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley.