SPMS undergraduate Ha Quang Trung is the Regional Winner for Asia at The Undergraduate Awards 2018

Ha Quang Trung, a fourth-year Physics undergraduate at NTU, has been announced as the the Asian Regional Winner at The Undergraduate Awards, a global competition for undergraduate student researchers.

Founded in 2008 and based in Ireland, The Undergraduate Awards draws participants from over 45 countries in 25 different disciplines. The award winners were selected by an anonymous panel of international academics and industry leaders.

Trung, who is currently in his final year of study at the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (SPMS), presented his work at the Global Undergraduate Summit in Dublin, Ireland, in November 2018. His research involved the study of the special features of physical systems in which energy is not conserved.

"The physics taught in school mostly applies to systems that are closed, so that energy is conserved," he explains. "However, there is also a way to model "non-Hermitian" systems, where energy is able to flow in or out. In my paper, I showed that a certain kind of lattice structure reproduces a two-dimensional continuum model that can be thought of as a new kind of non-Hermitian particle."

The 24 year old Vietnamese national says that he has his mind fixed on pursuing a career in academics. "I would like to thank SPMS for helping me with the funding for overseas conferences," he says. "I also thank my supervisor, Prof. Chong Yidong, for his guidance, and for entrusting me with a project that is part of the ongoing work in his research group."

SPMS proudly congratulates Trung on his achievement.