Clifford Will is the Editor-in-Chief of Classical and Quantum Gravity, Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Florida, Chercheur Associé at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, and James McDonnell Professor of Space Sciences Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis.

I am delighted to announce that the IOP’s Gravitational Physics Group’s thesis prize for 2014, co-sponsored by Classical and Quantum Gravity, has been awarded to Dr Anna Heffernan for her eloquently written thesis on the self-force problem in gravitational physics, and for her detailed calculation of the singular component of the divergent fields that arise.

Dr Heffernan obtained her PhD from University College Dublin, under the supervision of Prof. Adrian Ottewill.  She currently works at ESA.  Her thesis, entitled “The self-force problem: local behaviour of the Detweiler-Whiting singular field”, is available on the arXiv (arXiv:1403.6177).  You can also read an interview with Dr Heffernan here on CQG+.

The GPG thesis prize has been co-sponsored by CQG for a number of years; past winners of the prize include:

• Dr Cesar Simon Lopez-Monsalvo (University of Southampton). Covariant thermodynamics and relativity

• Dr John Miller (University of Glasgow). On non-Gaussian beams and optomechanical parametric instabilities in interferometric gravitational wave detectors

• Dr Barry Wardell (University College Dublin). Green functions and radiation reaction from a spacetime perspective

• Dr Emanuele Rocco (Birmingham). Development of a test of Newton’s Law of Gravitation at micrometre distances using a Superconducting Spherical Torsion Balance

• Dr Julian Sonner (Cambridge). Aspects of Classical and Quantum Brane Dynamics

An interview with Dr Heffernan is available on CQG+
For further details about the prize, including how to make nominations, please see the GPG web page.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.