Graduate Students

Featured Student: Luiz Ricardo Prais

Luiz Prais is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and a member of the UM Neutrino group directed by Dr. Gavin Davies. Luiz studies the quantum mechanical properties of neutrinos. Because of their weakly interacting nature, neutrinos can cross vasts amounts of matter, even our entire planet, without interacting; for this reason they are very difficult to detect, and are often referred to as “ghost particles”.

As a collaborator in the NOvA Experiment, Luiz analyzes data from the world’s most powerful neutrino beam, produced at Fermilab, a US Department of Energy National Laboratory. These neutrinos travel 500 miles through the Earth (no tunnel needed!), and are detected up north in Minnesota in a gigantic 14-thousand ton detector, bigger than an Airbus A380. When they arrive, the experiment also detects a type of neutrino that was not initially in the beam. This phenomenon is known as Neutrino Oscillations, and provide physicists with a unique window for searches of new physics. By comparing the measurements of neutrinos and its antimatter partner, the antineutrino, the experiment aims to understand what happened right after the Big Bang, 13 billion years ago, and why the Universe (and us!) exists!’

Recent results from these analyses have been presented by Luiz at dedicated international conferences, including a plenary session in Hurghada, Egypt, and more recently a poster with world-leading measurements by NOvA presented at the bi-annual international Neutrino conference in Milan, Italy.

Luiz also served as the President of the Department’s Physics Graduate Students Association, and currently sits on the College of Liberal Arts Research and Creative Scholarship Board.

His favorite hobby is traveling. A native of Palmares Paulista, Brazil, Luiz found a passion in exploring the world, and is on track to achieve his goal of visiting 80 countries in his lifetime. 40 countries have been checked-out in the list and he keeps all the memories in an old-fashioned travel journal, which he hopes will become a book one day.

Other Featured Students

Xinyue Gong Sumeet Kulkarni Anil Panta Lorena Magaña Zertuche

Current Students


Abeykoon, Madusanka Acharya, Bishnu Acharya, Utsab Ahmed, Nauman Bagchi, Subhayu Barman, Dipika Benninghoff, Logan Campagna, Quinn Dye, Andrew Farooq, Ehsan Feng, Tong	Gebeline, Paul Gong, Xinyue Huang, Xiaoyan Irby, Coleman Ishraque, Ahmed Farhan Karn, Bibek Khairnar, Aniket Knutson, Noah Liu, Guoqin	Osei-Nketiah, Samuel Junior Moore, Joshua Moulton, Nicklaus Nair, Gokul Sreekumar Narayan, Purnima Pandey, Kumar Prais, Luiz Ricardo Rabbi, Zahin Rai, Milan Roth, Harrison	Rostami, Sina Saleh, Raisa Nawar Schrader, Andrew Sharma, Arindam Sharma, Nancy Siedlecki, Ray Singh, Amitesh Sonia, Farhana Afrose Thurmond, Kaitlyn Wang, Zhengwu Yu, Byungchul

News

2024/09: Dipika selected as a Fall 2024 Global Ambassador to mentor new international students fostering cultural understanding and community connections
2024/05: Purnima selected as the 2024 International Graduate Student of the Year in recognition of her contributions to student life and outreach
2024/04: Lorena Magaña Zertuche selected as one of the two doctoral class Marshals for the 2023 – 2024 academic year graduating class
2024/03: Amitesh Singh was one of the facilitators for a CETL workshop designed specifically for STEM graduate students
2023/12: Sumeet Kulkarni awarded the 2023 Eric & Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications by the National Academies
2023/11: Luiz Ricardo Prais selected to be a student representative on the College of Liberal Arts Research and Creative Scholarship Council
2023/10: Baisakhi Mitra and Byungchul Yu awarded Universities Research Association (URA) Visiting Scholar fellowships
2023/09: Madusanka Abekyoon awarded a 9-month Data Science Assistantship by the UM Institute of Data Science
2023/05: Nauman Ibrahim and Joe Rivest awarded Graduate School Summer Research Assistantships for their PhD research.
2023/04: Anil Panta receives a Physics Data Scientist position at Jefferson National Lab where he will work in high energy physics computing
2023/03: Purnima Narayan selected as one of the 2023 – 2024 SEC Emerging Scholars Doctoral Fellows from the University of Mississippi
2021/07: Lorena Magaña Zertuche is awarded a Mississippi Space Grant Consortium (MSSGC) Graduate Fellowship
2021/04: Meghna Bhattacharya wins the UM 2021 Graduate Student Achievement Award
2020/03: Anil Panta receives a fellowship from the 2020 Ozaki Exchange Program
2019/11: Sumeet Kulkarni publishes popular science article in Scientific American