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Three Berlin Scientists Win ERC Grants

Grants from European Research Council for physicist and computer scientist at Freie Universität and mathematician at Humboldt-Universität

News from Nov 28, 2017

Physicist Prof. Dr. Stephanie Reich and computer scientist Prof. Dr. Frank Noé from Freie Universität Berlin and mathematician Prof. Chris Wendl (PhD) from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin have been awarded Consolidator Grants of roughly 2 million euros each from the European Research Council (ERC), as the ERC announced in Brussels.

Prof. Dr. Stephanie Reich plans to develop a new field of research in which she plans to customize the reaction of materials to light. She will work with her team to develop novel measuring methods to enable the development of highly sensitive sensors and to radiate beams of concentrated sound waves.

With this new funding, Prof. Dr. Frank Noé will be able to continue his successful research combining methods of mathematics, physics, and computer science, to gain new insights into life processes. The goal of his new ERC project is to simulate the binding processes of individual molecules and whole cells using computer technology. To do so, he and his team will develop and implement innovative methods in the field of machine learning.

Prof. Chris Wendl (PhD) conducts research on symplectic topology. The main theme of his project is the tension between transversality and symmetry in the theory of holomorphic curves, which play an important role in both pure mathematics and theoretical physics. His work will be based on a proof he produced in 2016 of a 15-year open conjecture about the "super-rigidity" property of holomorphic curves, whereby he was able to refute the supposed incompatibility of symmetry and transversality.

Of the total of 329 new ERC Grants approved in 22 EU member states, 56 were awarded to researchers in Germany.