Physics scores with six Rubicon awards
This week, NWO awarded six Rubicon grants to young, highly promising researchers with a physics research topic or a physics component in their research. With Rubicon, NWO gives researchers who have recently gained their PhD the opportunity to look abroad and gain research experience in a foreign country.
Michal Juriček will study molecular hard disks at Northwestern University in Chicago (USA), Aleksey Kocherzhenko will focus on the rapid transport of charge and energy by molecules at the University of California, Berkeley (USA) and Dr Daniela Kraft heads to New York University (USA) to study the crumpled skins of nanoparticles as a model system for viruses. Dr Reinoud Lavrijsen's research topic is 'Spintronics to the third dimension', he leaves for the University of Cambridge (UK) and Daan Meerburg will leave for Princeton University (USA) for research on messages from the Big Bang.
Rubicon for Klaas-Jan Tielrooij
Dr. Klaas-Jan Tielrooij, former PhD student at FOM Institute AMOLF, also received a Rubicon grant. He will do research for two years at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona (Spain) on 'Antennae for concealed information'. The capture of light particles (photons) from light sources which emit particles one by one is currently inefficient and difficult to control, and information is often lost: special (quantum mechanical) photon states are not preserved. We will capture this hidden information with new antenna technology.
Rubicon
The aim of the Rubicon programme is to keep talented researchers at Dutch universities and at the KNAW and NWO research institutes active in scientific research after the completion of their PhDs. Rubicon enables researchers to gain experience at a top foreign institute or at an excellent Dutch research institute for a maximum period of two years. Use of the grant for research abroad is preferred. The programme also offers talented researchers from abroad the opportunity to do research in the Netherlands for a maximum period of two years. With this programme NWO is therefore stimulating the international mobility of scientific talent. A total of 29 Rubicon grants were awarded in this round.
The complete list of approved proposals and further information about Rubicon can be found on the NWO website.