The 2024 Master’s Thesis Prize of the Finnish Physical Society has been awarded to Heidi Kivijärvi of the Aalto University, and was officially presented in the opening ceremony of Physics Days 2025. This award is given annually for an exceptional Master’s thesis in the field of physical sciences. It exists to support early-career researchers in Finland and acknowledge their excellent contributions to the field. The award consists of a €1000 prize, a plenary talk during the Physics Days opening ceremony, and one year of free membership to the Finnish Physical Society.
This year we received a good number of submissions, highlighting the excellent work being carried out across the country. Heidi’s thesis called Quantum-circuit refrigeration by noise shows her contribution to the field of quantum computing. The thesis shows a way how the quantum computer consumption of energy could be lowered down through an on-chip photon refrigerator utilizing waste heat generated by the system itself. Heidi demonstrated deep knowledge of the field and excellent writing skills proven in her theses. You can read more about Heidi’s thesis in their blog post here: https://www.fyysikkoseura.fi/language/en/?p=3311. Heidi’s thesis can be found here: https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202403172713.
We also award an honourable mention to one other researcher who made it to our final round of evaluation:
Hanna Lempiäinen (University of Helsinki) with the thesis titled “Vector dark matter as an SU(2) extension of the Standard Model.” You can read more about Hanna’s thesis here: https://www.fyysikkoseura.fi/language/en/2025/04/03/hanna-lempiainen:-vector-dark-matter-as-an-su(2)-extension-of-the-standard-model/. You can find Hanna’s thesis here: http://hdl.handle.net/10138/570172.
