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ERC Consolidator Grants for Rembert Duine and Ben Freivogel

22 December 2016

Two Delta ITP researchers were awarded a prestigeous ERC Consolidator Grant: theoretical physicists Rembert Duine from Utrecht University, and Ben Freivogel, University of Amsterdam. The ERC Consolidator Grant is meant for young researchers who obtained their PhDs between 7 and 12 years ago, and allows them to position themselves as independent research leaders.
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Prof. Rembert Duine, UU/TuE

Prof. Rembert Duine 

Spin Transport Beyond Electronics

Rembert Duine (Institute for Theoretical Physics, UU; part-time professor, TU/e) has been awarded a Consolidator Grant of the European Research Council of over 1,5 million euro in December 2016. The grant concerns in part magnetic insulators, materials that do not conduct electricity. Surprisingly, it was recently shown that these materials are able to transport signals and information. This project develops the models for understanding these new phenomena, with the ultimate goal of making signal transmission without energy loss possible at room temperature. Previously, Duine was awarded an NWO-VIDI grant and an ERC Starting Grant. 

An interview with Rembert Duine on the website of Utrecht University can be read here: Waves without energy loss

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Dr Ben Freivogel, UvA

Dr Ben Freivogel (Institute of Pysics, ITFA)

Quantifying Quantum Gravity Violations of Causality and the Equivalence Principle

Freivogel's ERC project intends to accurately identify the circumstances and scales where quantum-mechanical effects of gravity become relevant. Although these quantum effects are typically believed to be extremely tiny on scales that can be probed experimentally, recent results of Freivogel and others suggest that under certain circumstances quantum gravity effects can become large and perhaps even observable on much larger, macroscopic, length scales. This could in particular have major consequences for the possibility to probe quantum gravity through cosmology.