This news post is a bit late but for good reason!
First, let me start by congratulating Dr. Elizabeth (Beth) Gould on successfully defending her PhD thesis “New Views on the Cosmological Big Bang”, last September.
Beth’s thesis focused on innovative ways in which physics could be different as we approach big bang. Could it be that Quantum Mechanics is “out of equilibrium”, or that spacetime really has one more or less dimension? Or, could it be that history literally repeats itself, as our future is the same as our past (what we call periodic time cosmology)? In fact, one of Beth’s papers was even cited by the late great Stephen Hawking, in his final publication.
Beth is my 7th graduating PhD student. After a short postdoc at the University of Southampton this year, Beth will be joining the brand new Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute, at Queen’s University as a postdoctoral fellow, in September 2018.
And here is that last bit of good news that came out this week:
“Every year, top graduate students from the Faculty of Science are nominated for the W.B. Pearson Medal, which is given to a Doctoral student from each department in recognition of their creative research …
The W.B. Pearson Medal in Physics & Astronomy has been awarded to Elizabeth Gould for her research on “New Views on the Cosmological Big Bang”, with Niayesh Afshordi.”
So, please join me in congratulating Dr. Gould on successfully finishing her PhD, starting a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship, and being recognized for her creativity by the W.B Pearson Medal.
Niayesh Afshordi 
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