VR Grants Awarded to Nordita Researchers Beatriz Villarroel and Ralf Eichhorn

Author: Marie Hjeltman

Date published: 2024-11-08

We are proud to announce that Nordita researchers Beatriz Villarroel and Ralf Eichhorn have both been awarded grants from Vetenskapsrådet!

Dr. Beatriz Villarroel, a researcher in astrophysics, received a 4.4 million SEK starting grant for her project on "Detection of Fast Transients on Subsecond-Minute Time Scales." This project has two main goals: first, to search for short-lived transients associated with new astrophysical phenomena in an unexplored parameter space. The second aim is to investigate possible specular reflections and other emissions that could be potential signs of extraterrestrial artifacts and probes near the Earth.

Dr. Ralf Eichhorn, a statistical physics researcher from the soft condensed matter group, has been awarded a 3.68 million SEK project grant for his work on"Foundations and Generalizations of Stochastic Thermodynamics." This project aims to examine the foundations of stochastic thermodynamics based on the fundamental laws of classical (Hamiltonian) mechanics and equilibrium statistical mechanics. With this first-principle approach, Dr. Eichhorn hopes to explore a wider range of scenarios, such as systems where energy is not the only thermodynamic quantity exchanged between a system and its environment.

These grants from Vetenskapsrådet offer Dr. Eichhorn and Dr. Villarroel a great opportunity to delve deeper into the questions of theoretical physics, and we very much look forward to seeing the knowledge and discoveries these projects will lead to!