Master's Student Mikhail Zakharov about Aerogel as a Material of Future

The winner of the KFU's Best Research in Science is Mikhail Zakharov, 1st year student of MSc in Physics. However, he was absent at the awarding ceremony due to his internship at Ecole normale superieure, Paris.

This award is one of the many others this gifted student has received, such as KFU (2014) and Tatarstan (2014) Student of the Year in Natural Sciences as well as scholarships from British Petroleum, Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, Potanin Foundation. His achievements run further with being a co-author to 6 articles indexed by Scopus and WoS.  

The winning research project was conducted under the supervision of Prof. Murat S. Tagirov and Egor M. Alakshin from the Department of Quantum Electronics and Radiospectroscopy of the Institute of Physics and titled “3H HMR in contact with oriented aerogel Al2O3”. Mikhail says that this research is a fundamental task, because aerogel contacting 3H significantly influences its properties, and relaxation mechanisms are yet to be further investigated.

Broad-minded he writes his thesis on a different topic, which is magnetic properties of trifluoride lanthanides nanoparticles whereas his internship in France aims to study 3He polarization used in MRT diagnostics to enhance the quality of images.

Mikhail hopes that results obtained in Parisian lab will be a trigger for new publications.