ERC Starting Grants for quantum research in Delft

Three early-career researchers from Delft University of Technology have been awarded Starting Grants by the European Research Council (ERC). Tim Hugo Taminiau and Menno Veldhorst have landed the funding for their respective proposals “A quantum network for distributed quantum computation” and “Quantum information transfer between hole spins and topological states”. Daan Brinks is receiving a Starting Grant for his project, entitled “Multi-photon voltage imaging”. The funding will help them build their own teams and conduct pioneering research.

In the 2019 round, the ERC has awarded 408 Starting Grants to researchers from 51 nationalities. The winners have two to seven years of experience since completion of their PhD (or equivalent degree) and a scientific track record showing great promise in the fields of physical sciences and engineering, life sciences, and social sciences and humanities. From the European research and innovation program Horizon 2020, a maximum of 2.5 million euros per grant, including up to 1 million euros to cover extraordinary costs, is provided for up to five years. For the 2019 round, this amounts to a grand total of 621 million euros in allocated funding.

Among the other regional winners is Zeynep Akata from the University of Amsterdam, with her project “Deeply explainable intelligent machines”. Cristóbal Bertoglio from the University of Groningen has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant for research on “High-fidelity cardiovascular modeling from super-fast magnetic resonance imaging”. Anthony Papavasiliou from the Catholic University of Louvain is going to use the allocated funding to look into “Scalable optimization of power systems with flexible demand and renewable supply”.