Evert van Nieuwenburg’s Post

🎉 Yay! No fewer than 4 Vidi grants for our Leiden Science researchers! 👏 Congratulations to Bas Hensen, Rik Mom, Evert van Nieuwenburg and Matus Rybak with your Vidi grant from NWO (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek)🏅. Is gravity quantum? Can green-energy catalysts repair themselves? Can game-like AI tackle hard quantum problems? Why did stars form faster in the early Universe? These are the questions that these scientists will try to answer in the upcoming years. Which of these groundbreaking projects intrigues you the most? 👇 Bas Hensen (Leiden Institute of Physics - LION): ‘In the quantum world, atoms behave in unexpected ways, while gravity governs stars and the cosmos. We aim to explore where these two theories meet by levitating tiny magnetic particles and linking their motion to electron spins in diamond, creating quantum superposition states large enough to generate their own gravity.’ ⚛️ Rik Mom (Leiden Institute of Chemistry): ‘Electrocatalysts wear out during use, limiting technologies like green hydrogen and CO₂ conversion. Self-healing catalysts could last indefinitely by repairing themselves. In HEALECTRO, we aim to understand how their structure can combine this durability with efficient performance using experiments and X-ray techniques.’ ♻️ Evert van Nieuwenburg (LIACS/Leiden Institute of Physics - LION): ‘Quantum technology could transform society, from better sensors to new computers for healthcare. But developing it brings some of the hardest problems we face. In this project, we aim to make AI better at solving these challenges by having AIs play against each other and treating quantum control like a game.’ 🤖🎲 Matus Rybak (Leiden Observatory): ‘Stars in the early Universe formed much faster than they do today. We aim to understand why by studying the dense, cold gas that collapses into stars, using complex molecules like cyanides and observing over 100 early galaxies with radio telescopes and gravitational lensing.’ 🔭🪐 We also congratulate Joe Callingham, who is a researcher at Leiden Observatory and receives a Vidi for his work at ASTRON.