ICTP Wins ERC Advanced Grant

ICTP Senior Research Scientist Paolo Creminelli has been awarded a prestigious European Research Council Advanced Grant to explore the theory underlying some of the most complex systems in the universe, from black holes to the early phase of the universe's expansion, the so-called inflation.

ERC Grants are prestigious and competitive funding schemes supporting frontier research. Although ICTP became eligible only in 2021, six ICTP researchers have already been awarded ERC Grants. ERC Advanced Grants give senior researchers the opportunity to pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven projects that could lead to major scientific breakthroughs; only 10% of all proposals are selected for the grants.

The five-year project led by Creminelli is titled BestLobe (Bounding EFTs with Spontaneous Lorentz Breaking), and it will investigate research questions across condensed matter, cosmology and astroparticle physics, to understand how fundamental physical quantities change when particles move through a medium, rather than in empty space. This situation arises in many realistic settings: wave propagation through a fluid, the coalescence of binary black holes, and a wide range of cosmological phenomena.

The BestLobe project aims to establish rigorous boundaries on key physical quantities that will help interpret astrophysical and cosmological observations and guide future ones. The research will tackle questions in astrophysics: for example, to understand the spacetime deformations around colliding black holes; in condensed matter, to characterize certain properties of materials; and in cosmology, to shed light on the inflationary era that preceded the Big Bang. BestLobe will participate in the effort to better understand these systems by exploring how the techniques used to describe particles moving through a vacuum can be adapted to the case where a medium is present.

As part of this ERC Advanced Grant, ICTP will hire several early career researchers from multiple disciplines, including postdocs and PhD students, to collaborate with Creminelli on the project. The grant will also support the organization of workshops at ICTP and allow the institute to invite international collaborators. This will strengthen scientific exchanges both within the ICTP community and across different research areas.

“BestLobe will bring together knowledge and expertise from different fields of physics and mathematics to answer fundamental questions that are common to all of them. Applying for this grant has already brought a new perspective to my work. I am very grateful to the ERC for supporting this project and I look forward to collaborating with many colleagues: although I am BestLobe’s principal investigator, this will be a collective effort,” says Creminelli.

ERC Advanced Grants

On June 23 the European Research Council announced the winners of its latest Advanced Grant competition, one of the EU’s most prestigious and competitive funding schemes. The funding, worth €838 million, will go to 319 leading researchers across Europe. A record of 3,329 proposals was submitted to this competition, up 31% from last year. About 10% of proposals were selected. The Advanced Grants give senior researchers the opportunity to pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven projects that could lead to major scientific breakthroughs. The grants are part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme.