Leo Kouwenhoven receives ERC Synergy Grant and Genootschaps medal
FOM focus group leader professor Leo Kouwenhoven has received a prestigious ERC Synergy Grant together with Lieven Vandersypen (also at Delft University of Technology) and Carlo Beenakker (Leiden University). With this grant the European Union is investing 15 million euros in the construction of the first working quantum computer. This will be based on the Majorana particles, which Kouwenhoven and his team produced earlier this year. FOM and Microsoft funded that research. On Friday 30 November, Leo Kouwenhoven received the honourable Genootschaps medal from the Genootschap ter bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde. for his groundbreaking work in the experimental physics of quantum dots and the use of their properties to make Q-bits.
The researchers will use the ERC Synergy Grant to set up a new lab in Delft. Here the researchers will closely collaborate across the entire chain – from theoretical quantum physics to a miniature quantum computer. In 2004, FOM set up a focus group in this area under the leadership of Kouwenhoven.
The Genootschaps medal is awarded and presented to a researcher whose original research has made a contribution to the scientific disciplines covered by the Genootschap. Kouwenhoven (Delft University of Technology) is the 21st researcher to have received this honour. Previously honoured scientists include the Nobel Prize winners Van der Waals, Kamerlingh Onnes, Lorentz and Einstein.