CAN Thesis Award 2023 awarded to Peter Pang
On 20 June, Tsun Ho (Peter) Pang received the CAN-award for the best recent astroparticle physics thesis in the Netherlands. The award was handed out during the symposium of the Dutch astroparticle physics community in Soesterberg. This new prize is an initiative of the Committee of Astroparticle Physics in the Netherlands (CAN). It will be presented every year, to stimulate young talented researchers.
The jury praised Pang’s “original work on constraining the neutron star equation of state and astrophysical implications”. In his thesis, Pang combines multimessenger astrophysical data with data from collider experiments, which provides new insights into neutron stars. This work connects the fields of astroparticle physics and heavy ion physics, which can benefits both fields.
Pang works at Nikhef and Utrecht University. He defended his thesis ‘From spacetime to nucleus: Probing nuclear physics and testing general relativity’ successfully on 14 December 2022. He was also the shared first author of the publication ‘Constraining neutron-star matter with microscopic and macroscopic collisions’ in Nature in June 2022.