I believe this award will enhance the visibility and awareness of my doctoral work on phononic frequency combs to the wider engineering community. At NIST, I will be exploring the new experimental regimes of mechanical resonators and their application towards the precision measurement of physical quantities.

Adarsh Ganesan

The Hudswell International Research Scholarship is administered every year by the IET to 'encourage excellence in engineering and technology research, with a preference for electrical, electronic or manufacturing engineering'. This year's scholarship has been awarded to Adarsh for his work on phononic frequency combs. He will now be taking up a postdoctoral research position at NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).

Phononic frequency comb is the mechanical analogue of the Nobel Prize-winning invention of the optical frequency comb (light whose spectrum contains a series of sharp, equally spaced peaks that has revolutionised the design of atomic clocks and other high-precision devices).

It was during Adarsh’s PhD at Cambridge, that he reported the first clear experimental evidence for a phononic frequency comb, working alongside Professor Ashwin Seshia and Dr Cuong Do, which was published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Adarsh was also awarded the 2017 John Winbolt Prize for the paper, recognised by the University of Cambridge as the best paper published by a Cambridge PhD student in the field of engineering, and also the prestigious 2017 ABTA Doctoral Researcher Award in Engineering Sciences.

Adarsh will receive his scholarship certificate at the IET Achievement Awards Ceremony in November.

“I’m pleased to receive this postgraduate award from the Institution of Engineering and Technology,” said Adarsh. “I believe this award will enhance the visibility and awareness of my doctoral work on phononic frequency combs to the wider engineering community. At NIST, I will be exploring the new experimental regimes of mechanical resonators and their application towards the precision measurement of physical quantities.”

Professor Seshia said: “I’m delighted that Adarsh has received this prestigious award in recognition of his pioneering doctoral research work. These breakthrough results have already received significant interest and follow-up in the peer community, and this award is a testament to the quality of Adarsh's research, combining a high degree of experimental skill and insight with extraordinary perseverance and diligence."