Vedika Khemani of Stanford University has been Vedika Khemani (credit: Stanford University)named the recipient of the Richard E. Prange Prize and Lectureship in Condensed Matter Theory and Related Areas for 2025.  She will speak on Tues., Nov. 18 at 3:30 p.m. in room 1410 of the John S. Toll Physics Building. Refreshments will be served at 3:00 p.m. 

The Prange Prize, established by the UMD Department of Physics and Condensed Matter Theory Center (CMTC), honors the late Professor Richard E. Prange, whose distinguished professorial career at Maryland spanned four decades (1961-2000). The Prange Prize is made possible by a gift from Dr. Prange's wife, Dr. Madeleine Joullié, a professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Richard E. PrangeDr. Prange was a member of the Maryland condensed matter theory group for more than 40 years and was an affiliate of CMTC with its inception in 2002. He edited a highly-respected book on the quantum Hall effect and made important theoretical contributions to the subject. His interests extended into all aspects of theoretical physics, and continued after his retirement, recalled Sankar Das Sarma, who holds the Richard E. Prange Chair in Physics at UMD and is also a Distinguished University Professor and director of the CMTC.

While earning his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago under Nobelist Yoichiro Nambu, Prange also worked with Murray Gell-Mann and Marvin Goldberger. 

Khemani, who earned her Ph.D. at Princeton University in 2016 and accepted an appointment as a Junior Fellow with the Harvard Society of Fellows, has received a Sloan Fellowship, a Packard Fellowship, the George E. Valley Jr. Prize of the American Physical Society, the Breakthrough New Horizons in Physics Prize and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. She serves on the Executive Committee of Q-FARM the Stanford Quantum Science and Engineering Initiative and is a member of Stanford’s Leinweber Institute of Theoretical Physics. She is well-known for her work on non-equilibrium quantum dynamics.  Khemani has made seminal contributions to many topics in quantum physics, including many-body localization, time crystals, driven quantum systems, and quantum entanglement. 

Khemani joins a prestigious list of Prange Prize recipients: Philip W. Anderson, Walter Kohn, Daniel Tsui, Andre Geim, David Gross, Klaus von Klitzing, Frank Wilczek, Juan Maldacena, Charles Kane and Pablo Jarillo-Herrero.

In addition to the Tuesday lecture, will deliver the Joint Quantum Institute Seminar on Monday, Nov. 17 at 11 a.m. in room 2400 of the Atlantic Building.