Titas Chanda (left) and Sthitadhi Roy. | Photo credit: International Center for Theoretical Physics
The 2025 ICTP Prize has been awarded to Titas Chanda of IIT-Madras and Sthitadhi Roy of the International Center for Theoretical Sciences in Bengaluru, the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) said.
AND declaration stated that the award “recognizes the winners’ exceptional and original contributions to the theory of quantum many-body systems at the interface of condensed matter and quantum information science” and that their work “opened new directions in the understanding of nonequilibrium dynamics of quantum systems, quantum correlations and measurement-controlled phase transitions”.
This means that physicists study many interacting quantum particles using ideas from both condensed matter physics and quantum information science.
This work is relevant to the problems of keeping quantum devices – such as quantum computers and sensors – under control and understanding what they do when they are out of balance.
Quantum many-body systems are systems with lots of quantum “pieces”, eg electrons in a solid or atoms in an ultracold gas, whose collective behavior is dominated by the way they interact. Because particles interact with each other, physicists usually cannot understand the entire system by solving for one particle at a time.
Condensed matter is a branch of physics concerned with collective behavior in materials and engineering matter, including magnets and superconductors. It tries to answer questions like: what stages are there? Why do they magnetize? How do they conduct heat? What happens near a phase transition? And so on. Similarly, quantum information science treats quantum states as information and uses quantities such as entanglement and entropy to characterize and manipulate them.
According to ICTP, the award was shared by Dr. Chanda, assistant professor at IIT-Madras, for contributions to quantum information science and many-body quantum physics, including work on quantum correlations and open quantum systems, as well as applications such as “quantum batteries, communication protocols and resource theory”.
His work includes the development of numerical tools and results in areas the release cites as quantum optics, cold atoms and strongly correlated systems, the statement added.
Dr. Roy, an assistant professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research’s International Center for Theoretical Sciences in Bengaluru, shared the prize for contributions to “non-equilibrium dynamics of quantum many-body systems”, including work on “measurement-induced phenomena, many-body localization and emergent phases of quantum matter”.
In its report, ICTP said its research includes results on “hybrid quantum circuits” and “protocols that use measurements to prepare exotic topological and dynamical phases”.
The ICTP prize is an annual affair and has been awarded since 1982 to young scientists from developing countries. It carries a certificate and a money folder. Past winners from India include Mohit Kumar Jolly, Narendra Ojha, Aninda Sinha, Shiraz Minwalla, Ashoke Sen and G. Baskaran.
The annual award is also given to honor a scientist who has “excelled” in the field that is the focus of this year’s award. The 2025 prize was dedicated to the memory of the Italian physicist Giancarlo Ghirardi, “whose tireless work on the foundations of quantum mechanics”, the release states, purports to be “a modern quantum information method based on entanglement”.
ICTP was founded by Pakistani physicist and Nobel laureate Abdus Salam in 1964 to support scientists from developing countries.
Published – 15 Dec 2025 10:00 AM IST
