Fellowships and Honors

  1. Suyash Rijal,  Ph.D. of Physics, Summer 2024, “Understanding and control of frustration and topological defects in ferroic matter.”
  2. “Harnessing AI as a Research Copilot” by Peng Chen and Laurent Bellaiche was included in the 2024 Coalition for Academic Scientific Computation (CASC) colour brochure.
  3. FY24 Naval HPC Pathfinder Award to Lingyuan Gao and Laurent Bellaiche (2023).
  4. Ray Hughes Graduate Fellowship  (RHGF) awarded from the Physics Department, University of Arkansas to Suyash Rijal (2023).
  5. Best Poster presented by a postdoctoral student at the 2023 Workshop on Fundamental Physics of Ferroelectrics and Related Materials; Golden, CO, February 5-8, 2023; “Electric Field induced movement of polar topological defect in epitaxially strained BiFeO3 thin film,” Sukriti Mantri
  6. APS DMP Physics Post-Doctoral Travel Awards (March 5–10, 2023, Las Vegas) to Peng Chen.
  7. Third place for a presentation by a Ph.D. student at the (virtual) summer school on Bridging First-Principles Calculations and Effective Hamiltonians, 7-16 June 2021. Reward to ”Finite-temperature dynamics in cesium lead iodide” by Xin Wang.
  8. Best Poster presented by a student at the 2020 Workshop on Fundamental Physics of Ferroelectrics and Related Materials; Silver Spring, MD, January 26-January 29, 2020; “Finite Temperature Magnetic Properties of Rare Earth-Iron Garnets,” Davis Campbell
  9. “Large-Scale Simulation of  Thin Film Physics” by  Yousra Nahas, Sergei Prokhorenko and Laurent Bellaiche was included in the 2019 Coalition for Academic Scientific Computation (CASC) colour brochure.
  10. Student Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) award from Arkansas Department of Higher Education awarded to Davis Campbell (Fall 2018).
  11. Robert D. Maurer scholarship awarded for “Outstanding Physics Major” to Davis Campbell (Spring 2018).
  12. First place of the MicroEP IAB Poster and 3-min Presentation contests awarded to S. Omid Sayedaghaee at the Industrial Advisory Board of microEP; Fayetteville, Arkansas, November 12, 2018;“Novel Dynamical Magnetoelectric Effects in BiFeO3: A Molecular Dynamics Study,” S. Omid Sayedaghaee, Sergey Prosandeev, Bin Xu, Charles Paillard, Laurent Bellaiche.
  13. Third prize of the MicroEP IAB Poster and 3-min Presentation contests awarded to S. Omid Sayedaghaee at the Industrial Advisory Board of microEP; Fayetteville, Arkansas, October 02, 2017;
    “The effect of time-dependent magnetic field on electrical polarization in bismuth ferrite,” S. Omid Sayedaghaee, Sergey Prosandeev, Bin Xu, Charles Paillard, Laurent Bellaiche.
  14. Honors College Research Grant from the Honors College of the University of Arkansas awarded to Timothy Scarbrough (Spring 2017).
  15. Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded to Raymond Walter (Fall 2016); research project: “Electronic Properties of Complex Ferroelectric Geometries by Large Scale Ab Initio Simulations,” in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).
  16. Second prize for presentation by a graduate student at the 100th Annual Meeting of the Arkansas Academy of Science awarded to Kinnary Patel; Fayetteville, AR, April 01-02, 2016; “Universal energetic coupling in complex antiferroelectric and incommensurate perovskites”.
  17. Best Poster presented by a postdoctoral student at the 2015 Workshop on Fundamental Physicsof Ferroelectrics and Related Materials; Knoxville, TN, January 25- January 28, 2015; “Skyrmionic state in ferroelectric nanocomposites,” Y. Nahas.
  18. Student Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) award from Arkansas Department of Higher Education awarded to Kruz Kalke (Fall 2015).
  19. Excellent postgraduate students’ award of Zhejiang University in China awarded to Hongjian Zhao (2015).
  20. Excellent postgraduate students’ award from Zhejiang province in China awarded to Hongjian Zhao (2015).
  21. The National Scholarship for PhD students given by Ministry of Education of People’s Republic of China awarded to Hongjian Zhao (2014).
  22. Student Undergraduate Research Fellowship  (SURF) award from Arkansas Department of Higher Education awarded to Ryan Nakamoto (Fall 2014).
  23. Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) award from NSF awarded to Raymond Walter (Spring 2013).
  24. 2012 Man of the year for the Rostov Region (Russia) awarded to Sergey Prosandeev (2012).
  25. Travel grant award from DOE to attend the 12th DOE ACTS Collection Workshop at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, CA, August 16-19, 2011, awarded to Jeevaka L. Weerasinghe (Summer 2011).
  26. Travel grant award from ICMR UCSB for participating in the “African School on Electronic Structure Methods and Applications,” July 14 – 25, 2008, African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cape Town (South Africa) awarded to Sergey Lisenkov (Summer 2008).
  27. Membership in the University of Arkansas chapter of Sigma Xi awarded to Saad Bin-Omran (Spring 2008).
  28. MCC Travel award for attending the workshop “XIII INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON COMPUTATIONAL PHYSICS AND MATERIALS SCIENCE: TOTAL ENERGY AND FORCE METHODS”, 11-13 January 2007, Trieste (Italy) awarded to Sergey Lisenkov (Fall 2006).
  29. MCC Travel award for attending the workshop “High performance density functional theory : wavelets, order(N) scaling, parallelism”, 26 November – 1 December 2007, Lyon (France)  awarded to Sergey Lisenkov (Fall 2007).
  30. Graduate Dissertation Research Award, J. William Fulbright College,University of Arkansas, Dec. 2004, to A. R. Akbarzadeh.
  31. Walton Distinguished Doctoral Fellowship awarded to Laura Walizer.
  32. IBM-Zerner Fellowship for Graduate Students awarded to Alireza Akbarzadeh [link].
  33. Sandia National Laboratories fellowship awarded toNicholas Farrer (Summer 2001).
  34.  World Laboratory Scholarship awarded to Ahmad Al-Yacoub (01/01/01-12/31/01).

Laurent’s awards in the CCMP group

  1. Faculty Gold Medal from the Office of Nationally Competitive Awards of the University of Arkansas, given to only five or six faculty members “who consistently (and often successfully) support students through the application process for state and national scholarships, for competitive research grants, or for other forms of recognition” in 2023.
  2. Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI), with Berkeley, Cornell and Penn State, from the Department of Defense in 2021
  3. Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (VBFF) from the Department of Defense in 2020.
  4. Scientific Associate Investigator of the Australian FLEET
  5. center (ARC Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies) in 2019.
  6. SEC Faculty Achievement Award recipient in 2019.
  7. Elected a fellow of the Arkansas Research Alliance (ARA) in 2017.
  8. (Visiting) Faculty Professor at LIST (Luxembourg) between 2015 and 2018.
  9. ZiQiang Professorship from Shanghai University (Shanghai, China) in 2015.
  10. (Visiting) Faculty position at Xi’an Jiaotong University (Xi’an, China) in 2011.
  11. Overseas Distinguished Scientist from Xi’an Jiaotong University (Xi’an, China) in June 2011.
  12. Elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2010 for “For pioneering contributions to the first-principles theory of semiconductor alloys and ferroelectric materials”.
  13. Alumni Association’s 2009 Faculty Distinguished Achievement Award in Research.
  14. Fulbright College Master Research award in 2007.
  15. the Twenty-First Century Endowed Professor in Optics, Nanoscience and Science Education at the University of Arkansas since 2006.
  16. (Visiting) Faculty position at the Ecole Centrale (Paris, France) since 2003.
  17. Member of the ONR-sponsored (and multi-universities) Center for Piezoelectrics by design (CPD) that gathers 11 U.S.-based scientists.
  18. CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (2000).
  19. Ralph Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from ORAU (1999).

 

 

Student Degrees Conferred

  1. Temuujin Bayaraa, Ph.D. of Physics, Fall 2021, “Interplay between the lattice and spin degrees of freedom in magnetoelectric and magnetic materials.”
  2. Kinnary Patel, Ph.D of Physics, Spring 2021, “Study of Static and Dynamical Properties of Complex Antiferroelectrics Materials.”
  3. Sayed Omid Sayedaghaee, Ph.D in Microelectronics/Photonic, Fall 2020, “Static and Dynamical Properties of Multiferroics.”
  4. Davis Campbell, Honors Studies in Physics, Fall 2019, “Finite Temperature Magnetic Properties of Rare-Earth Iron Garnets.”
  5. Raymond Walter,  Ph.D. of Physics,  Spring 2019, “Large-Scale Atomistic Simulations of Complex and Functional Properties of Ferroic Materials.”
  6. Charles Paillard, Ph.D. of Physics (from Université Paris-Saclay, France), Fall 2016, “Photo-induced Effects in Ferroic Materials.’’
  7. Ryan Nakamoto,  Honors Studies in Physics, Spring 2016, “First-Principles Calculations of Rare-Earth Iron Garnets.”
  8. Kruz Kalke,  Honors Studies in Physics, Spring 2016, “GPU based Hybrid Monte-Carlo simulations of varphi4 lattice models.”
  9.  Zhigang Gui,  Ph.D. of Physics, Spring 2015, “Static and Dynamical Properties of Ferroelectrics and Related Materials in Bulk and Nanostructure Forms.”
  10. Dovran Rahmedov,  Ph.D. of Physics, Spring 2014, “Properties of multiferroic BiFeO3 from first principles.”
  11. Raymond Walter,  Honors Studies in Physics, Spring 2013, “Modeling Complex properties of  Ferroelectric Nanocomposites.”
  12. Lydie Louis, Ph.D  in Microelectronics/Photonic, Summer 2013, “Multiscale study of BaTiO3 nanostructures and nanocomposites.”
  13. Jeevaka Weerasinghe,  Ph.D. of Physics, Summer 2012, “Dynamical Properties of Ferroelectric Perovskites (Ba,Sr)TiO3 and Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 Systems from First Principles.”
  14. David Sichuga, Ph.D. of Physics, Summer 2010, “Influence of oxygen octahedral tilting on the properties of low-dimensional lead-zirconate-titanate systems”
  15. Laura Walizer, Ph.D  in Microelectronics/Photonic, Spring 2009, “Modeling of Compositionally Graded Barium Strontium Titanate From First Principles”
  16. Saad Bin-Omran, Ph.D. of Physics, Spring 2008, “Properties of ferroelectric ultrathin films from first principles”
  17. Emad Almahmoud, Ph.D. of Physics, Fall 2007, “Critical behavior of ferroelectric nanostructures from first principles”
  18. Lydie Louis, Master of Science in Microelectronics/Photonics, Fall 2006, “Investigation of BaTiO3 Nanowires From First Principles“
  19. Laura Walizer, Master of Physics, Fall 2005, “Modeling of Barium Strontium Titanate From First-principles“
  20. Alirezea Akbarzadeh, Ph.D. of Physics, August 2005, “Simulating Quantum Effects in Ferroelectrics from First principles“
  21. Yulia Navtsenya, Master of Science, Spring 2005, “Finite-Temperature Properties of BaTiO3 ultrathin films from first principles“
  22. A. Al-Barakaty, Ph.D. of Physics, Fall 2004, “Finite-Temperature Properties of complex perovskites from first principles calculations“
  23. Saad Bin-Omran, Master of Physics, Spring 2004, “ Properties of ordered Sc1-xInxN alloys from first-principles“
  24. David Sichuga, Master of Physics, Fall 2002, “ Properties of ordered ScInN from first-principles“
  25. Abdullah Al-Barakaty, Master of Physics, Fall 2001, “Finite-Temperature Properties of Pb(Sc0.25Nb0.25Ti0.5)O3 Alloys from First principles“
  26. Ahmad Al-Yacoub, Ph.D. of Physics, Fall 2001, “ Optical, Electronic and Piezoelectric Properties of Nitride Semiconductors“
  27. Aaron M. George, Master of Applied Physics, Fall 2001, “ Composition Modulation in Pb(Sc,Nb)O3“
  28. Renaldo Hemphill, Master of Microelectronics/Photonic, Fall 2001, “ Finite Temperature Properties of PSN“