ERC Advanced Grant funding
Olli Ikkala
Project: Life-Inspired Soft Matter
Duration: 2024–2029
This funding is Olli Ikkala's third Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The project explores nature-inspired materials that increasingly have the properties of living systems. The state of living systems is governed by a feedback loop called homeostasis. Project develops materials that can be brought out of equilibrium by external stimuli.
Maarit Karppinen
Project: Unique ALD/MLD-Enabled Material Functions
Duration: 2023–2028
Professor Karppinen research group develops new materials by combining inorganic and organic components with atomic and molecular precision. The goal is to develop ALD/MLD technology in an innovative way, exploiting unique new hybrid materials and material functionalities.
Person profile Maarit Karppinen News: Significant funding for thin-film technology research - materials to be developed can be used, for example, in energy storage
Samuel Kaski
Project: ODD-ML: Out-of-Distribution Deployable Machine Learning
Duration: 2026–2030
Samuel Kaski’s ERC grant aims to develop new types of machine learning. A virtual, simulation-based laboratory, in which scientists receive AI assistance and part of the scientific process can be automated, is one example of how the new machine learning results can make ‘AI4Science’ a reality. The purpose of automation is not to remove scientists from the process or humans from the eventual output.
Person profile Samuel KaskiNews: A revolution for R&D with the missing link of machine learning — project envisions human-AI expert teams to solve grand challenges
Vili Lehdonvirta
Project: The Geopolitics of Cloud Computing: How State-Firm Interactions Shape the Geography of Computation to Produce Digital Sovereignty and Dependence
Duration: 2024–2029
The trend towards hyperscale cloud infrastructures is creating powerful global gatekeepers of computational capability. At the heart of Lehdonvirta's investigation lies a quiet revolution. The production of digital services has moved from modest corporate data centres to sprawling hyperscale cloud infrastructures. The project will also examine the way governments try to influence the geography of computing through policy.
Person profile Vili LehdonvirtaNews: Cloud empires: Mapping the geopolitics of data infrastructures
Peter Liljeroth
Project: Realizing designer quantum matter in van der Waals heterostructures
Duration: 2025–2029
This ERC funding is for research into new quantum materials. The aim is to develop critical building blocks to enable future quantum devices.
Person profile Peter LiljerothNews: Major European funding for research into new quantum materials
Mikko Möttönen
Project: New superconducting quantum-electric device concept utilizing increased anharmonicity, simple structure, and insensitivity to charge and flux noise
Duration: 2022–2027
This five-year project led by Professor Mikko Möttönen, will develop a new qubit which will more accurately carry out quantum operations, such as those used in quantum computing. The team will also develop electronics that can operate at temperatures near absolute zero – in the millikelvin range. This is the fifth time Möttönen has received one of the extremely competitive ERC grants.
Person profile Mikko MöttönenNews: Mikko Möttönen and his team aim to rein in qubit errors
Antti Oulasvirta
Project: Artificial User
Duration: 2024–2029
Oulasvirta studies the interaction between humans and computers and creates computational models of human behaviour. These models can be used to predict, for example, how easy it is to use a mobile device, but can also explain behaviour, like why some feel that AI-assisted text input is difficult while others do not. The modelling of behaviour has taken a giant leap over the past decade, while machine learning has made significant steps forward.
Person profile Antti Oulasvirta
News: Researchers investigate how AI could better understand humans
Mika Sillanpää
Project: Probing the limits of quantum mechanics and gravity with micromechanical oscillators (GUANTUM)
Duration: 2021–2026
The team is trying to solve a hundred-year-old mystery of physics with the help of small gold spheres and extremely low temperatures.
In the GUANTUM project, researchers will bring gold spheres, with a diameter of 0.5 mm and a mass of one milligram, acting as sensitive oscillators in a quantum-mechanical state. It is an extremely closed system where phenomena unseen in classical physics may occur. At the same time, they will observe the very small gravitational forces, which cause the gold spheres to be attracted toward each other.
Zhipei Sun
Project: Atomically-engineered nonlinear photonics with two-dimensional layered superlattices
Duration: 2019–2024
The expected outcomes of this project will result in significant advances in fundamental physics and breakthrough technologies to enable highly-integrated, wideband and high-efficient photonic systems.
Personal profile Zhipei SunNews: Aalto nabs 3 ERC Advanced Grants