First ISOLDE PhD Thesis Prize Awarded

We are very pleased to announce that the first ever ISOLDE PhD Prize, given to the best PhD thesis defended from 1 August 2025 to 31 July 2026 in nuclear physics and related disciplines based on ISOLDE data, has been awarded to Thien Thanh Dang for the thesis “Atomic-Scale Environments in BiFeO₃ at Nuclear Probes”:

https://repository.cern/records/zjmk5-krr44.

  Thanh’s dissertation addresses a fundamental and long-standing question of the microscopic origin of magnetoelectric coupling in bismuth ferrite (BiFeO₃, BFO). He used radioactive nuclear probes and Time-Differential Perturbed Angular Correlation (TDPAC) spectroscopy to investigate these phenomena directly at the atomic scale.

  He has been invited to present his work at the ISOLDE Workshop and Users Meeting at CERN, in November 2026.

  The ISOLDE Prize committee, composed of W. Nörtershäuser, M. Pfützner, K. Lynch and G. Georgiev, noted the excellent theses that were nominated for the prize and that this is a very good sign for ISOLDE and its community.