11:57 a.m., Oct. 1, 2009----The University of Delaware's Department of Physics and Astronomy has awarded its annual Daicar-Bata Prizes, which recognize exceptional Ph.D. student accomplishments.

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The department awards two Daicar-Bata Prizes, one for the best research paper in a physics or astronomy peer reviewed journal published during the current academic year and the other for the highest grade point average in physics and astronomy courses at the end of the student's sixth semester in the program.

Representing the Daicar family during a ceremony held Wednesday afternoon, Sept. 30, in Gore Hall, Eva Daicar presented the best research paper award to Xiaoming Kou for his work “Tunable Ferromagnetic Resonance in NiFe Nanowires with Strong Magnetostatic Interaction,” which was published in Applied Physics Letter.

The other two finalists, Bhupender Thakur and Joshua Wickman, were presented with $250 prizes and a certificate for excellence in scholarship.

The highest grade point average award recognizing exceptional academic performance was given to Rizwan Khalid, who has maintained a 4.0 GPA.

The Daicar-Bata Prizes were established to recognize and support achievement excellence and to advance the graduate program to a higher academic and research level of performance. Each recipient receives $2,500 and a certificate of recognition.

Six nominations for the best research paper were received this year. The three finalists for the best research paper presented their work during a departmental colloquia and immediately afterwards a panel of faculty met to decide on the winner.

“The panel was very impressed by the accomplishments of this year's nominees and the talks that were given by the finalists. We hope this event serves to inspire our incoming class of graduate students,” said Edmund Nowak, director of the graduate program.

The Daicar-Bata Fund was established in 1992 in honor of Otto Daicar and to commemorate his lifetime contributions throughout the world to the Bata Corporation. Mr. Daicar, as an individual and senior executive, exemplified a devotion to performance excellence, unconditional integrity, and kindness, which guided and inspired people of diverse cultures.

The initial donation for the fund came from the Bata Corporation and the Daicar family, and the remainder was raised from the alumni of the Department of Physics and Astronomy and matching funds from the University of Delaware.