Winners of the Student Travel Grants 2025
We continue to extend our sincere thanks to all students who applied for the 2025 Student Travel Grant. The high quality and diversity of submissions continue to highlight the value of this initiative and the vibrant research community it supports.
Much like previous years, applications were received from a wide range of disciplines and geographic regions. Following an eligibility review, a random selection was used to choose one recipient per region, ensuring fairness and transparency
This year's winners are:,
- Riju Pal (IFW Dresden, Germany), Transport and Spectroscopic Studies of Layered Magnetic and Low-Dimensional Superconducting Materials, PhD thesis, University of Calcutta (2025).
Featured instrument: MFLI Lock-in Amplifier - Jay Krishna Anand (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India), Resonance Frequency Measurement Unit (RFMU) for the Dynamic Characterization of Nanomechanical Resonator, IEEE Xplore: 10.1109/TIM.2025.3580899 (2025).
Featured instrument: MFLI Lock-in Amplifier - Malida Hecht (University of Southern California, USA), Beating the Ramsey limit on sensing with deterministic qubit control, Nature Communications: 10.1038/s41467-025-58947-4 (2025).
Featured instrument: HDAWG Arbitrary Waveform Generator and UHFQA Quantum Analyzer
They will be able to spend their individual prizes of 1'500 CHF on conference fees, textbooks or online courses.
Read what the three winners told us about their experience working with Zurich Instruments' products, and don't forget – the call will open again this year in 2026!
Learn more about the winners' research here:
Riju Pal (IFW Dresden, Germany)
I first learned about Zurich Instruments when my PhD supervisor, Dr. Atindra Nath Pal (SNBNCBS, India), introduced me to lock-in detection using the Zurich Instruments MFLI lock-in amplifier. The MFLI (500 kHz / 5 MHz) played a central role in my low-temperature electronic transport experiments on van der Waals magnetic materials, enabling precise detection of weak signals in magnetoresistance, Hall effect, resistivity, and low-frequency noise measurements under noisy conditions. Its excellent signal-to-noise ratio, fast measurement speed, and ultra-low noise floor significantly improved the accuracy and reliability of our data. I particularly value the instrument’s versatility, the intuitive LabOne interface for real-time signal monitoring, the Scope tool for optimizing measurement frequencies, and the Spectrum Analyzer for spectral analysis of the measured signals.
Riju Pal (IFW Dresden, Germany), Transport and Spectroscopic Studies of Layered Magnetic and Low-Dimensional Superconducting Materials, PhD thesis, University of Calcutta (2025).
Jay Krishna Anand (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India)
My supervisor, Prof Ankur Goswami, while discussing the application of resonator introduced me to Lock-in detection using MFLI. Thereafter, we further explored in more detail from the research blog and tutorial of Zurich MFLI. We have used this instrument as one of the components to develop Resonance Frequency Measurement unit (RFMU) to study dynamic performance of nanomechanical resonators. Thanks to the Zurich instruments for developing such a user friendly MFLI having a provision of oscilloscope, signal generator, sweeper for sweeping various parameters etc. The sweeper module of MFLI in the lab one software is heavily explored by us to obtain amplitude and phase spectrum of the resonator near its resonance. Apart from this, recording of phase data in the plotter window for longer duration while driving the resonator at resonance to obtain Allan deviation measurement is an additional benefit of using MFLI.
Jay Krishna Anand (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India), Resonance Frequency Measurement Unit (RFMU) for the Dynamic Characterization of Nanomechanical Resonator, IEEE Xplore: 10.1109/TIM.2025.3580899 (2025).
Featured instrument: MFLI Lock-in Amplifier
Malida Hecht (University of Southern California, USA)
I was introduced to Zurich Instruments as it was one of the main quantum controllers that we use in our lab setting for experiments.
Specifically, we use Zurich Instrument's HDAWG to upload arbitrary waveforms for control and readout pulses that get sent into
the dilution fridge to interact with the quantum devices for our experiments, and we use the UHFQA for digitizing readout signals in order to analyze the results. The HDAWG allowed us to upload large, complicated waveforms at a high sampling rate.
Malida Hecht (University of Southern California, USA), Beating the Ramsey limit on sensing with deterministic qubit control, Nature Communications: 10.1038/s41467-025-58947-4 (2025).
Featured instrument: HDAWG Arbitrary Waveform Generator and UHFQA Quantum Analyzer