Phani Deep Meruga awarded Best Student Poster Prize at LINAC 2026

We are pleased to announce that EuPRAXIA-DN Fellow Phani Deep Meruga has been awarded Best Student Poster Prize in recognition of his outstanding poster presentation at the 33rd Linear Accelerator Conference (LINAC 2026). This year’s conference took place from 16–21 August 2026 at the Daejeon Convention Centre in Daejeon, Korea. 

The LINAC conference series is the premier biennial gathering for the worldwide community of linear accelerator experts. It provides a unique opportunity to learn about the most recent advances in research, development, and applications of linear accelerators for both hadron and lepton beams.

Phani during the award ceremony.

Phani, who is based at Instrumentation Technologies in Slovenia and is in the final year of his PhD at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, presented his research on experimental validation of an X-Band LLRF prototype for high-gradient linear accelerators. Developed within the EuPRAXIA-DN project for the EuPRAXIA@SPARC_LAB LINAC at INFN-LNF in Italy, the system is designed to precisely control and stabilise the amplitude and phase of short, ~100 ns X-band RF pulses, supporting reliable operation of compact, high-gradient linear accelerators.

Phani presenting his research during the student prize award session.

Phani said:” I’m very honoured to receive this award. It was a wonderful opportunity to present my research, and I was also very happy to briefly present the EuPRAXIA project to the audience. Overall, it was a wonderful experience for me, and I feel it was a memorable way to mark the conclusion of my doctoral studies.”

Congratulations!