Three SB researchers awarded SNSF Starting Grants
Laurent Dufour, Chiara Perrina, and Philippe Schwaller. Credit: EPFL
The School of Basic Sciences (SB) at EPFL has secured three SNSF Starting Grants in 2024, underlining its leadership in pioneering research. The prestigious grants, awarded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, recognize early-career scientists for their innovative and ambitious projects across physics, chemistry, and data science.
The SNSF Starting Grants, funded by the State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation (SERI), provide early-career researchers at Swiss institutions the opportunity to establish their own teams and carry out groundbreaking independent projects. Each project is selected for its potential to advance knowledge and impact the scientific community.
Laurent Dufour: Connecting searches for New Physics in Charm decays (CONNECT)
Currently at CERN, Laurent Dufour will bring his expertise to EPFL to establish a new laboratory focused on particle tracking techniques for high-energy physics. His SNSF-funded project, CONNECT, aims to resolve outstanding questions surrounding matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. Specifically, Dufour and his team will study the subtle differences between charm quarks and their antiparticles with the data from the LHCb detector at CERN. Leveraging new photon reconstruction techniques, this research will make a leap to measure observables with an unambiguous interpretation, and could uncover physics beyond the Standard Model. On top of the physics goals, its contribution to LHCb will further strengthens the EPFL’s strong ties to the global high-energy physics community.
Chiara Perrina: Redefining the Cosmic-Ray and Gamma-Ray Physics Frontier in Space with DAMPE and HERD (SPACER)
Chiara Perrina, based at EPFL’s Laboratory of High-Energy Physics (LPHE), will lead the SPACER project, addressing fundamental astrophysical mysteries using next-generation space missions. The project focuses on the HERD detector, set to be launched aboard the China Space Station in 2027. Perrina’s work includes developing a scintillating-fiber tracker for HERD, analyzing cosmic rays and gamma-ray emissions from pulsars, and leveraging machine learning to identify antiprotons. The SPACER project has profound implications for our understanding of dark matter, cosmic rays, and the origin of the universe’s unexplained phenomena.
Philippe Schwaller: Open Large Language Model-Centered Agent Systems for Chemical Research
Philippe Schwaller, based at EPFL’s Laboratory of Artificial Chemical Intelligence, is leveraging his SNSF Starting Grant to redefine the way chemicals are discovered and developed. His project focuses on creating “agentic” AI systems—advanced artificial intelligence tools capable of independently planning, reasoning, and acting to achieve scientific goals. By integrating large language models with laboratory automation, these AI agents will autonomously plan experiments, analyze results, and suggest new directions for exploration. The project’s open-source approach will validate these systems across key areas, including catalyst discovery and drug development, helping Switzerland maintain its leadership in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, which account for nearly half of national exports.