Assistant Professor Zohreh Davoudi has been honored with the 2018 Kenneth G. Wilson Award for Excellence in Lattice Field Theory during the 36th Annual International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory held July 22–28 at Michigan State University. Davoudi was cited for her fundamental contributions to lattice field theory in a finite volume that are essential for performing lattice simulations of complex systems.

The annual award is named after Nobel Laureate Ken Wilson (1936-2013), who founded lattice gauge theory in 1974, permitting such theories to be studied numerically using powerful computers. Established in 2011, the award recognizes outstanding lattice field theorists who are within seven years of completing the Ph.D., and consists of a modest monetary prize and an invitation to give a plenary talk at the next symposium on lattice field theory.

Davoudi’s significant contributions to formulating the path between quantities obtained in numerical simulations of lattice field theory in a finite spacetime and the physical observables have advanced the few-body frontier in lattice field theory. The cited work paved the road towards obtaining important quantities in particle and nuclear physics, such as two and three-body scattering amplitudes, bound-state properties, electromagnetic structure of hadrons and nuclei, coupled-channel scattering and reaction rates.

Davoudi received her Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics at the University of Washington, and held a postdoctoral position at the Center for Theoretical Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining UMD in 2017. She studies how complex systems of hadrons and nuclei emerge from fundamental interactions of nature using a combination of analytical and computational methods.

Photo courtesy of Lattice 2018. Christine Davies, University of Glasgow (left) Zohreh Davoudi, University of Maryland (right).