Pantelis Bampoulis (Faculty of S&T) and Florence Metz (Faculty of BMS) have been awarded the prestigious individual ERC Starting Grant of 1.5 million euros. The ERC Starting Grants, provided by the European Research Council, are designed to support excellent Principal Investigators to start an independent research team or programme.
Q-EDGE
Dr Pantelis Bampoulis – Faculty of S&T
Living on the Edge: Unraveling Electron Correlations and Topological Transport in Quantum Spin Hall Insulators.
In the project Q-EDGE, Bampoulis explores new materials that fundamentally change how our electronic devices work. Currently, our electronic devices lose a lot of energy through heat, besides heating your laptop to an uncomfortable level for your lap, there is a lot of wasted energy. Bampoulis will research a unique class of materials that allow electricity to flow along their edges without resistance. This means no energy is lost as heat and we could develop electronic devices that require much less power.
This class of materials, called Quantum Spin Hall Insulators, usually function at extremely low temperatures. However, Bampoulis will focus on the material germanene which functions at room temperature. “This could make it practical for everyday use in electronics since we normally don’t use our smartphones at extremely low temperatures”, says Bampoulis.
Settling a scientific debate
A key aspect of Bampoulis' research is the pursuit of topological superconductivity in germanene heterostructures. These germanene-based heterostructures offer the potential to unlock new and remarkable properties, as well as enable deeper insights into the conditions necessary for topological superconductivity. Besides that, Bampoulis also hopes to settle an important and controversial topic in condensed matter physics: the existence and nature of Majorana states. There have been reports of this Majorana particle, which is its own antiparticle, but these findings are hotly debated. It is unclear whether these states truly have the unique properties that protect them from disturbances, or if they are merely defect-like states.
Bampoulis will offer an additional knob to tune and explore these states. The unique properties of germanene allow him to distinguish between the defect-like states and the true Majorana states. Hopefully, this provides clear evidence that could settle the ongoing debates in the field.
CLIMPLEXITY
Dr Florence Metz – Faculty of BMS
CLIMate policy integration – a comPLEXITY trap?
The European Union has made climate a key priority, dedicating 30% of its budget (557 billion euros) to climate-related spending and requiring all policy sectors to consider climate priorities. Despite these efforts, the EU is still projected to miss its net-zero CO2 emissions goal for 2050. According to Florence Metz, one key reason for this failure is that the increasing number of climate policies often contradict each other, rather than working together coherently.
Confliction climate policies create a so-called ‘complexity trap’, that makes it hard to achieve the desired outcomes. Metz predicts a tipping point after which adding new policies may not improve the situation, but paradoxically impair it because contradicting policies start to dominate. Metz aims to challenge core premises via a complex systems perspective to move ‘beyond the trap’.
Complexity trap
The complexity trap arises when the number of policies and their interdependencies become too difficult to manage effectively. “Initially, new policies might seem beneficial, but as their number grows, the interaction between them becomes exponentially more complex”, says Metz. Understanding and addressing these interdependencies is crucial to creating a coherent and effective policy framework.
Metz aims to create a systemic perspective to understand why these policies are not working well together. She will develop new theories and methods to study how different policies interact and affect each other. By doing this she hopes to provide better insights and tools for policymakers. The goal is to help create more coherent and effective climate policies that can actually meet the EU’s climate goals.
About ERC
The European Research Council funds talented young researchers to set up an independent research project. The ERC offers four central grant schemes (Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants) and an additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme. These grants enable researchers to launch pioneering research.
