ICTP and the Quantum ESPRESSO Foundation have announced the awarding of their 2024 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