Open Competition Science-M grants for Slawinska and Tolstoy

The Dutch Research Council (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, NWO) has awarded two Open Competition Science-M grants to researchers from the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE). Dr. Jagoda Slawinska of the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials receives an M1 grant of EUR 330,000 for her project 'Twisting 2D materials for chiral spintronics'. Prof. Eline Tolstoy of the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute receives an M-invest grant worth EUR 500,000 for her project 'The Netherlands delivers the Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector for the Extremely Large Telescope'.

M grants are intended for innovative, high-quality fundamental research and / or studies with scientific urgency.

Dr. Jagoda Slawinska (Zernike Institute) | Twisting 2D materials for chiral spintronics

Among the alternatives that could make our devices faster and more power-saving is harnessing an extra degree of freedom related to the rotation of electrons, called spin, to carry and process information. To make spintronics successful, materials that efficiently convert electrical and spin signals are needed. Slawinska will design heterostructures with supreme conversion efficiency by exploring atomically-thin materials stacked on top of each other like a sandwich. The relative twisting of layers will give rise to an intriguing, albeit not well-understood, conversion phenomenon called chirality-induced spin selectivity which Slawinska will unveil and optimize.

Prof. Eline Tolstoy (Kapteyn Institute) | The Netherlands delivers the Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector for the Extremely Large Telescope

The Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector (ADC) is a small, but critical component for creating razor-sharp images with the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). Without an ADC the light of stars fuses into a blur of overlapping rainbows. The ADC corrects the atmosphere in real-time, separating stars and making it possible to measure their properties. A working prototype has been developed, and this NWO funding enables Tolstoy's team to build the ADC for the MICADO instrument and put it into operation. It will benefit Dutch and European astronomy for 10-20 years.

NWO Open Competition Domain Science-M

M-grants are intended for realizing curiosity-driven, fundamental research of high quality and / or scientific urgency. The grant offers researchers the possibility to elaborate creative and risky ideas and to realise scientific innovations that can form the basis for the research themes of the future.