ERC Advanced Grant funding
Adam Foster
Project: Atomically precise materials engineering through deep learning (ARCADE)
Duration: 2027–2031
Professor Foster studies nanoscale surface and interface physics in this ERC project. With the help of the Advanced Grant, Foster and his team will develop an AI-infrastructure linked to a scanning probe microscope. It allows researchers to automate the imaging, identification and manipulation of individual molecules on surfaces. The approach is general, but in this project, the team targets the fabrication of designer spin materials that have possible applications in quantum computing and sensing.
News: Highly sought-after EU funding for three Aalto University researchers
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 KarppinenNews: 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: 2025–2029
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
Jani Oksanen
Project: Volumetric ThermoPhotonics
Duration: 2027–2031
Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are best known as high-efficiency light sources, but fundamental thermodynamics show that they can also operate as heat pumps: Under the right conditions they can absorb thermal energy from their surroundings and emit it as optical energy. The Volumetric thermophotonics project led by Oksanen investigates how powerful this effect can become in real devices and how to design optically optimal LED architectures enabling efficient thermophotonic machines.
News: Highly sought-after EU funding for three Aalto University researchers
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
Duration: 2021–2027
The goal of the project is to determine the effect of gravity on the quantum-mechanical states and vibrations of two gold spheres on a very small scale, and at extremely low temperatures. This will be the third ERC grant Sillanpää has received. In the project the researchers try to solve a hundred-year-old mystery of physics: the incompatibility of the general relativity and quantum mechanics.
Personal profile Mika SillanpääNews: Physicist Mika A. Sillanpää wins a multi-million euro research grant to support work reconciling quantum mechanics and general relativity
Jukka Suomela
Project: Distributed Quantum Advantage
Duration: 2027–2031
Professor Suomela’s ERC-funded project investigates which tasks in computer networks could be accelerated using quantum computation and quantum communication. In large networks such as the Internet, multiple computers work together and coordinate by exchanging messages with one another. The fewer messages are required, the faster and more usable the network becomes. Prof. Suomela is interested in how much quantum technology could help.
Personal profile Jukka Suomela
News: Highly sought-after EU funding for three Aalto University researchers