Luís Oliveira e Silva granted with the Advanced Grants from ERC for the second time
Luís Oliveira e Silva, Full Professor in IST Physics Department and President of the Scientific Council, as just been granted with “Advanced Grant” from the European Research Council (ERC) for the second time, with the value of 1,950 million €, after the 1,6 million € in 2010. It is the first time that a researcher from physic's science and engineering working in national territory wins the "Advanced Grants" twice, and he is also the youngest exact sciences researcher in Europe having it. Only Zach Maimen was granted twice while working in Portugal in the life sciences area. According to ERC, the "Advanced" funding allows exceptional scientific leaders, of any age or nationality, to develop highly risked research projects in Europe.
The prize will be used in his recent project by the name InPairs, to explore the mechanisms of laser light conversion in matter and anti-matter, as a direct application of Einstein's formula E = mc2. Supported by the world's biggest supercomputers, it will study the collective resultant properties of the interaction between photons, electrons and positrons in the presence of ultra intense fields. These extreme environments can be found in some of the most spectacular Universe's events, such as neutron stars and pulsars. It aims also to learn how to reproduce these extreme conditions on laboratory, as for example in ultra intense laser's focus, and exploring its settings to produce high-quality gamma-ray sources.
Luís Oliveira e Silva leads a team of theory and numeric simulation from the Group of Lasers and Plasmas (GoLP) of the Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear (IPFN), where the project InPairs will be developed.
