The second IPM – Mansouri String Prize “for  work done in Iran by a young Iranian string theorist” was awarded to Mohsen Alishahiha of IPM for his paper:

M. Alishahiha, E. Silverstein and D. Tong
‘DBI in the Sky: Non-Gaussianity from Inflation with A Speed Limit’,
Phys. Rev. D 70 (2004), 123505.
arXive.org link: hep-th/0404084 [ abs, ps, others], cited by
Code: IPM/P-2004/066

     He was chosen by the International Advisory Committee of the School of Physics of IPM in a meeting in Tehran on April 13^th. The committee members in Tehran meeting were Farhad Ardalan, Alexander Belavin, Spenta Wadia, Johnathan Ellis,  Werner Nahm and Ashoke Sen. Cumrun Vafa and Robert H. Brandenberger participated in the meeting via telephone. 
    
    The first prize was awarded to Mohammad Reza Garousi of Mashhad University in 2006.
    
    The citation of the award which was unanimous is:  

IPM-Mansouri String Prize is awarded to

Mohsen Alishahiha

   Iran is fortunate in having many excellent string theorists doing first-rate research inside the country. We have decided to award the Freydoon Mansouri Prize on the basis of one particularly imaginative paper written during the past few years, which has had strong international impact. We award the Freydoon Mansouri prize to Mohsen Alishahiha, who is the faculty member of School of Physics for his paper: ‘DBI in the Sky: Non-Gaussianity from Inflation with A Speed Limit’. This paper has explored new mechanisms for generating the spectrum of cosmological density perturbations in the context of strongly-coupled quantum field theories, using the AdS/CFT correspondence. The paper also points out characteristic observational signatures of the model, including a departure from Gaussianity and a substantial tensor component in the cosmological background radiation. The paper is a rare example of a possible bridge between deep theory and astrophysical observation.

   This is a striking example of the excellent research being produced by the new generation of string theorists in Iran. (Award Ceremony Photos , Audio)     
 
   The winner of the prize Mohsen Alishahiha obtained his B.S. from Sharif University and M.S. from Tehran University working on physics applications of non-commutative geometry. He received his PhD from Sharif University working with Farhad Ardalan on Sieberg-Witten gauge theories. He held a postdoctoral position at IPM and then another postdoctoral position at CERN, and later at Amsterdam University, Netherlands.

     He returned to Iran in 2003 and has been with IPM since. He is currently a professor of theoretical physics at IPM.

     The work for which the prize was given was done in Tehran at IPM in 2004.


     IPM – Mansouri Prize was established in 2003 in memory of late Freydoon Mansouri, Professor of University  of Cincinnati in the U.S, who passed away in April 2003. Freydoon Mansouri was an associate of IPM and had collaborated with IPM researchers extensively.

     In his memory a fellowship was also established for a graduate student working for his or her Ph.D thesis in string theory. The first fellowship was awarded in 2005 to Mahdi Torabian of Sharif University of Technology who worked under the supervision of Mohammad Mehdi Sheikh-Jabbari of IPM and the second one was awarded to Alireza Tavanfar of IPM who was working under supervision of Shahrokh Parvizi of IPM in 2007.