First ERC Consolidator Grant at the UW Faculty of Physics
24 11 2023
Category: Achievements, Competitions, People
The European Research Council (ERC) has announced the results of its Consolidator Grant competition. Four researchers from the University of Warsaw were among the winners, including Professor Paweł Caputa from the UW Faculty of Physics, affiliated to the IAS. He will receive €2 million for his project.
Last Thursday, the ERC announced the list of researchers who will receive Consolidator Grants. These are aimed at researchers between 7 and 12 years after their PhD. Funding of up to €2 million is available for a project lasting up to five years.
Professor Pawel Caputa of the UW Institute of Theoretical Physics was a Simons Foundation “It from Qubit” Fellow and Research Assistant Professor at the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto. He received his Ph.D. from the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen in 2011. He has held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in Stockholm. He is currently leading the Polish Returns 2019 group established under the NAWA programme.
Thanks to the ERC grant, Professor Paweł Caputa will carry out the project ‘Quantum Complexity from Quantum Field Theories to Quantum Gravity’. In an interview with the Polish Press Agency, he explains: “The aim of my project is to understand what is easy and what is difficult in the quantum world, and what the laws of physics might look like inside black holes. In more technical terms, the project aims to develop precise measures of the quantum complexity of states and operators in quantum theories and apply them to models of quantum gravity in order to better understand the interiors of black holes and cosmological singularities”.
The research is interdisciplinary. It transfers methods from information theory and quantum computing to many-body physics and quantum gravity. It can help to answer fundamental questions, for example about the physics of black holes.
One of the roles of the UW Institute for Advanced Studies is to coordinate the application process for major national and international research grants, including the ERC Consolidator Grant. We are delighted to be able to help such outstanding scientists as Professor Paweł Caputa to succeed on a global scale and we invite you to take advantage of our support.
Photo: Prof. Paweł Caputa, author: Jarosław Rybusiński