Vedika Khemani ’10 Wins APS Prize
January 20, 2021
Vedika Khemani (’10) has won the 2021 George E. Valley Jr. Prize from the American Physical Society. The citation on the APS site reads
“For seminal theoretical work on novel phases of many-body localized and Floquet systems, including demonstrating the absolute stability of a time crystal in such systems.”
“This award recognizes an early career individual for an outstanding scientific contribution to physics that is deemed to have significant potential for a dramatic impact on the field,” and includes a $10,000 prize.
Kehamani’s APS biography begins with the HMC thesis work on gravitational holography that she conducted with Prof. Vatche Sahakian and for which she won the Thomas B. Brown Memorial Prize. After graduating from HMC in 2010, Khemani attended Princeton University where she studied non-equilibrium phases of matter in many-body Floquet systems with Professor Shivaji Sondhi. After earning her doctorate in 2016, Khemani served for three years as a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows before joining the Stanford Department of Physics as an Assistant Professor in 2019.
The Prize was awarded in a ceremony on 4 February 2021. Professor Khemani’s segment begins at 3:15.