STARTING SHORTLY: TODAY the Walter Kohn Prize Award ceremony, 9 January 2025 at 16:00 Live at the Stasi Lecture Hall

[Infopoint]

_*Invitation to the Walter Kohn Prize Award Ceremony, today 9 January 
2025, at 16:00, Stasi Lecture Hall*_

Dear All,

All are welcome to attend the Walter Kohn Prize Award Ceremony. The 
ceremony will be held today, *9 January 2025 *at ICTP, during the 
Centre’s 22nd International Workshop on Computational Physics and 
Materials Science: Total Energy and Force Methods 
<https://indico.ictp.it/event/10815/>.

The Ceremony will be livestreamed [ http://ictp.it/livestream ] at the 
Stasi Lecture Hall and on ICTP YouTube channel.

ICTP and the Quantum ESPRESSO Foundation 
<https://foundation.quantum-espresso.org/> have announced the awarding 
of their 2024 Walter Kohn Prize 
<https://www.ictp.it/prize/walter-kohn-prize> to Rafael Gonzalez 
Hernandez, a professor at the Universidad del Norte, Colombia, for his 
ground-breaking work in uncovering the physics and properties of 
altermagnetism, an unconventional magnetic state of matter, and for his 
/ab initio/ predictions of related effects in real materials.

Using density functional theory, a quantum-mechanical /ab initio/ 
simulation method with which researchers can compute a wide variety of 
properties of atomic systems, Gonzalez Hernandez's work has paved the 
way for experimental validation of altermagnetism, which is considered a 
new branch of magnetism.

Professor Rafael Gonzalez Hernandez earned his master's and PhD degrees 
at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. He has received a number of 
accolades for his work, including a research fellowship from the 
Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation, Germany; the TWAS Prize for Young 
Scientists in Developing Countries in the area of physics, granted by 
the Colombian Academy of Sciences and The World Academy of Sciences; he 
was an ICTP Junior Associate in 2015. He is a Corresponding Member of 
the Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences.

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.

Light refreshments will be served in the lobby after the event.

Best regards,
Secretariat on behalf of the Organisers
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