Diploma 2025 Graduation Ceremony

A year ago, they arrived at ICTP as strangers prepared to sharpen their physics and mathematics knowledge as the latest batch of Postgraduate Diploma students. Now, after months of intense research and study, the young scholars have graduated from ICTP's Postgraduate Diploma Programme, along the way making friendships with each other that will last a lifetime.

The 43 students from 27 countries celebrated their achievement at a graduation ceremony held on 27 August 2025. As of that date, 28 of them have been accepted to PhD or masters' programmes at universities in Europe, Asia and the United States.

Each year the top students in each of the Diploma programme disciplines are singled out for their achievements. This year's top students are:

• High Energy Physics: Yassine El Mohtadi (Morocco)
• Condensed Matter Physics: Komal Rubab (Pakistan), and Chau Duc Phuong Vo (Vietnam)
• Mathematics: William Sean Hendarto (Indonesia), and Qasim Mahmood Raja (Pakistan)
• Earth System Physics: Ahmed Salhi (Algeria)
• Quantitative Life Sciences: Layal Gergess Tannous (Lebanon)

Further recognition to Diploma top achievers is provided by the Qaisar and Monika Shafi Prize. Qaisar Shafi, a Pakistani-American theoretical physicist who was a student of ICTP founder Abdus Salam, is now the Inaugural Bartol Research Institute Professor of Physics at the University of Delaware, and maintains close ties with ICTP. He and his wife Monika, a noted scholar of German literature and faculty member at the same university, established the prize in 2023. This year's Shafi Prize was awarded to William Sean Hendarto and Komal Rubab.

ICTP proudly congratulates all of our Diploma graduates!

See story links below to interviews with some of this year's Diploma graduates.