Aneesur Rahman Award

The Rahman Award is a $1,000 prize is awarded to advanced graduate students for outstanding research contributions.

Rahman Fellowship

2026 Rahman Award Recipients

Arpon Paul: "I am originally from Bangladesh. I work in high energy theory, using holography to study phase transitions in the early universe, partly motivated by the possibility of detecting their gravitational wave signatures in future observatories. I am also interested in physics beyond the Standard Model, including axion physics, as a way to address open questions in particle physics."

2025 Rahman Award Recipients

William Benoit: "My research is focused on using machine learning to search for gravitational waves from binary black hole and neutron star mergers in LIGO data."

Peiran Lee: "My research focuses on high energy phenomenology, including standard model precision measurements and BSM searches at various experiments such as LHC, muon collider, lepton beam-dump, etc."

Colin Riggert: "I study experimental platforms for exotic states of quantum matter. Using advanced nanofabrication methods and quantum transport measurement techniques, I design, create, and characterize quantum devices which combine superconductors and semiconductors. In these devices, I aim to realize novel low-energy bound states which hold promise in applications from fault-tolerant quantum computing to quantum simulation."

 
group of three accepting a prize

2024 Rahman Award Recipients

Wen-Han Kao

Wen-Han is originally from Taiwan. He works on theoretical condensed matter physics with Prof. Natalia Perkins. His research interests focus on frustrated magnetism and quantum spin liquids.
 
Wen-Han Kao

2023 Rahman Award Recipients

Theo Jacobson
Theo is originally from San Diego, California. He works on nonperturbative aspects of quantum field theory. 
Theo Jacobson, Rahman Award recipient

2021 Rahman Award Recipients

Richard Diurba
Richard is from Akron, Ohio but lived mostly in Omaha, Nebraska as a child. He works on experimental neutrino physics through the DUNE and MicroBooNE collaborations. All of his work is involved in evaluating the performance and measuring the systematic uncertainties of the ProtoDUNE Single-Phase and MicroBooNE detectors.
 
Yiming Wu

Yiming is originally from China. He plans to use the award money on daily life spending, in support of his current research projects as well as his doctoral thesis.Yiming is a condensed matter theorist. His research interest is mainly correlated electronic systems, including topics such as quantum phase transition and unconventional superconductivity.

2021 Rahman Prize Recipients

2020 Rahman Award Recipients

Sharan Banagiri

Sharan is from Hyderabad, India, which incidentally, is the same city that Aneesur Rahman was from before moving to Europe and then eventually to the US. He plans to use a portion of the award to buy a new laptop. His research focuses on gravitational-waves physics and on using gravitational-waves as tools for astrophysics and cosmology. Sharan works on developing methods and algorithms to detect and study gravitational-waves and work with the data from LIGO.

Andrew Miller

Andrew is from St. Paul, MN. He will use the award as summer support, while he completes his thesis over the next few months. He specializes in high energy phenomenology and physics beyond the standard model.

2020 Rahman Award Recipients

2019 Rahman Award Recipients

Daniel Shaffer

 

Evan Moen

 

2019 Rahman Award Recipients