Research & Art

ERC Advanced Grant funding

The European Research Council (ERC) funding is awarded to leading researchers for pioneering work at the frontiers of science. ERC Advanced grants provide an opportunity to well-established and outstanding scientists having a track-record of significant research achievements in the last 10 years to pursue innovative, high-risk research.
Olli Ikkana in Otaniemi, photo by Lasse Lecklin.

Olli Ikkala

Project: Life-Inspired Soft Matter
Duration: 2024–2029

This funding is Olli Ikkala's third Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The project explores nature-inspired materials that increasingly have the properties of living systems. The state of living systems is governed by a feedback loop called homeostasis. Project develops materials that can be brought out of equilibrium by external stimuli.

Person profile Olli Ikkala

News: Bioinspired colours and adaptable materials - Professor Olli Ikkala's third EU project builds on living systems

Maarit Karppinen

Maarit Karppinen

Project: Unique ALD/MLD-Enabled Material Functions
Duration: 2023–2028

Professor Karppinen research group develops new materials by combining inorganic and organic components with atomic and molecular precision. The goal is to develop ALD/MLD technology in an innovative way, exploiting unique new hybrid materials and material functionalities.

Person profile Maarit Karppinen  News: Significant funding for thin-film technology research - materials to be developed can be used, for example, in energy storage

Vili Lehdonvirta, phóto: Mikko Raskinen, Aalto University

Vili Lehdonvirta

Project: The Geopolitics of Cloud Computing: How State-Firm Interactions Shape the Geography of Computation to Produce Digital Sovereignty and Dependence
Duration: 2024–2029

The trend towards hyperscale cloud infrastructures is creating powerful global gatekeepers of computational capability. At the heart of Lehdonvirta's investigation lies a quiet revolution. The production of digital services has moved from modest corporate data centres to sprawling hyperscale cloud infrastructures. The project will also examine the way governments try to influence the geography of computing through policy.

Person profile Vili LehdonvirtaNews: Cloud empires: Mapping the geopolitics of data infrastructures

Peter Liljeroth

Peter Liljeroth

Project: Realizing designer quantum matter in van der Waals heterostructures
Duration: 2025–2029

This ERC funding is for research into new quantum materials. The aim is to develop critical building blocks to enable future quantum devices.

Person profile Peter LiljerothNews: Major European funding for research into new quantum materials

Aalto University professor Mikko Mottonen, photo Mikko Raskinen

Mikko Möttönen

Project: New superconducting quantum-electric device concept utilizing increased anharmonicity, simple structure, and insensitivity to charge and flux noise
Duration: 2022–2027

This five-year project led by Professor Mikko Möttönen, will develop a new qubit which will more accurately carry out quantum operations, such as those used in quantum computing. The team will also develop electronics that can operate at temperatures near absolute zero – in the millikelvin range. This is the fifth time Möttönen has received one of the extremely competitive ERC grants.

Person profile Mikko MöttönenNews: Mikko Möttönen and his team aim to rein in qubit errors

Professor Antti Oulasvirta. Photo: Aalto University / Jaakko Kahilaniemi

Antti Oulasvirta

Project: Artificial User
Duration: 2024–2029

Oulasvirta studies the interaction between humans and computers and creates computational models of human behaviour. These models can be used to predict, for example, how easy it is to use a mobile device, but can also explain behaviour, like why some feel that AI-assisted text input is difficult while others do not. The modelling of behaviour has taken a giant leap over the past decade, while machine learning has made significant steps forward.

Person profile Antti Oulasvirta

News: Researchers investigate how AI could better understand humans

Professor Mika Sillanpää

Mika Sillanpää

Project: Probing the limits of quantum mechanics and gravity with micromechanical oscillators (GUANTUM) 
Duration: 2021–2026

The team is trying to solve a hundred-year-old mystery of physics with the help of small gold spheres and extremely low temperatures.

In the GUANTUM project, researchers will bring gold spheres, with a diameter of 0.5 mm and a mass of one milligram, acting as sensitive oscillators in a quantum-mechanical state. It is an extremely closed system where phenomena unseen in classical physics may occur. At the same time, they will observe the very small gravitational forces, which cause the gold spheres to be attracted toward each other.

Personal profile Mika SillanpääNews: Physicist Mika A. Sillanpää wins a multi-million euro research grant to support work reconciling quantum mechanics and general relativity

professor zhipei sun portrait. image anni hanen-kajander / aalto university

Zhipei Sun

Project: Atomically-engineered nonlinear photonics with two-dimensional layered superlattices
Duration: 2019–2024

The expected outcomes of this project will result in significant advances in fundamental physics and breakthrough technologies to enable highly-integrated, wideband and high-efficient photonic systems.

Personal profile Zhipei SunNews: Aalto nabs 3 ERC Advanced Grants

See also other European Research Council (ERC) fundings

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