ERC Advanced grant for Ursula Keller
Institute for Quantum Electronics (IQE)
Ten professors from ETH Zurich have secured prestigious ERC Advanced Grants. Among them is physicist Ursula Keller, who is receiving the coveted funding for the second time.
From ETH’s perspective, it is not only the result of the current round of funding that is impressive, but also the high success rate: of the 18 applications submitted, 12, or two thirds, reached the second evaluation stage, and more than half were ultimately successful. To put ETH’s outstanding achievement into context: only 269 applications out of a total of 2167 received an ERC Advanced Grant. This exceptional result is close to the 2009 record, when ETH researchers won 11 Advanced Grants. This ranks ETH Zurich as the third most successful institution in this research competition after the French CRNS (15 grants) and Oxford University (14 grants).
The grants awarded are worth between EUR 2.2 and 3.2 million each, with an overall total of around EUR 26 million. The new recipients come from seven ETH departments. The variety of topics is once again very broad, ranging from the development of electronically controlled gene circuits to research on weather processes that will shape extreme seasons in future.
The project of Ursula Keller in short
Ursula Keller, Professor of Ultrafast Laser Physics, has been awarded a second ERC Advanced Grant. In her new project, she aims to develop a new kind of dual-comb semiconductor laser for use in mid-infrared spectroscopy. This technology would be of interest to many areas of research and industry, such as environmental and pharmaceutical applications. She invented the new concept together with her research group in the near infrared range. It is based on a single low-cost semiconductor laser that generates two frequency combs and does not need to be further stabilised for many applications, something that is unique in this field. She now wants to bring this laser technology into the mid-infrared range, which the semiconductor technology of her laser makes possible.