Two BRIDGE grants for young ETH physicists
- Physics
- Institute for Quantum Electronics (IQE)
The first BRIDGE Proof of Concept call of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Commission for Technology and Innovation (CTI) attracted 101 proposals, submitted by young researchers from across Switzerland. Eleven ideas have now been funded, including the two projects of ETH physicists Mariia Timofeeva and Florian Emaury.
BRIDGE Proof of Concept helps young researchers to apply their research results and gain the confidence needed for a market launch. In the context of this first call, a panel composed of experts in applied research evaluated 101 proposals in a two-stage process. After the first round of evaluation, 31 researchers were invited to continue to the second level — a presentation of the project and subsequent interview. The projects, submitted in February 2017, were deemed to be of very high quality. Based on the evaluation of the interviews, the SNSF and the CTI will use the available budget to support 11 projects that have a particularly strong scientific basis, a convincing implementation plan and a high economic or societal potential.
Each of the 11 young researchers will receive up to 130,000 Swiss francs in funding to implement their project.
(Adapted from a external page SNSF press release.)
The two funded projects of ETH physicists
Mariia Timofeeva is a researcher at the Institute for Quantum Electronics, working in the Optical Nanomaterials group of Rachel Grange. Her BRIDGE project, entitled "High Resolution Nonscanning Multiphoton Polarimetric Microscope (PolarNon)", is dedicated to the development of cost-effective hardware and software solutions for the characterization of materials and nanostructures, based on the polarimetric analysis of their nonlinear responses.
Florian Emaury works as well at the Institute for Quantum Electronics, in the Ultrafast Laser Physics group of Ursula Keller. His project, "Ultrafast semiconductor disk lasers: enablers for widespread bio-medical imaging (MicPulse)" aims to revolutionise the market of ultrafast-pulsed laser sources with semiconductor technology. It provides affordable laser sources to research and industrial personnel to perform advanced optical non-linear processes. (For more details, see external page www.micpulse.ch.)