Five SNSF Ambizione grants awarded in Physics
From l. to r.: J. Blazek, R. Jayaraman, D. Johnson, C. Lardo, F. Natterer
The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) has awarded Ambizione grants to five young researchers to perform their own projects within the Institute of Physics (IPHYS).
The highly selective Ambizione program is aimed at young researchers who wish to conduct, manage and lead an independent project at a Swiss higher education institution. The awarded projects are funded for three years. This year, the Institute of Physics was particularly successful, taking five of the six grants awarded to EPFL:
Jonathan Blazek, presently a postdoc at the LASTRO, will remain in this laboratory with his project “Accurate Cosmology with Observations of Galaxies”. He studies how the locations and shapes of galaxies relate to the surrounding web of cosmic structure that contains most of the matter in the universe.
Rajeswari Jayaraman, presently a postdoc at the LUMES, will perform in this laboratory her project “Real time magnon dynamics for next generation magnonic devices”. She will be developing a variety of innovative magnetic materials with several geometric patterns on the surface, with the purpose of creating new artificial spin-based (magnon) behaviors for novel memory technologies.
Daniel Johnson, till recently a research fellow at CERN, was awarded a grant for his project “A New Virtual Laboratory for Exotic Particle Searches” to be performed within LPHE. However he has, in the meantime, taken a position at CERN as a research physicist.
Carmela Lardo, presently a postdoc at the Astrophysics Research Institute in Liverpool (UK), will join the LASTRO to perform her project “Globular clusters or dwarf galaxy relics: the mystery of multiple populations”. She will use spectroscopy and photometry to investigate star cluster population properties and constrain the origin of their multiple populations.
Fabian Natterer, presently a postdoc at IBM Research Center Almaden (USA), will join the LNS to perform his project “Single atom and molecule radio wave absorption spectroscopy”. He uses electron spin resonance to study the magnetic interaction between individually positioned single atom magnets.