2 September 2019

The European Research Council (ERC) has announced that seven of its prestigious ERC Starting Grants will be awarded to scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) this year. The research led by Michael Knap, Principal Investigator within MCQST, is among the awarded projects.

Michael Knap receives the prestigious ERC Starting Grant

Every year, the European Research Council awards its acclaimed ERC Grants to fund cutting-edge research projects in a variety of categories. Starting Grants are reserved for scientists who are in the early years of their careers. The value of each grant can be as high as EUR 1.5 million.

Michael Knap is Professor of Collective Quantum Dynamics at TU Munich and MCQST member.

About the Collective Quantum Dynamics

Some of today’s conventional processors are reaching the limits of what they can achieve. Quantum computers are seen as a promising alternative as they can deal more effectively with many different problems – in theory, at least. In reality, many of the basic principles of the quantum materials to be used in these computers are still shrouded in mystery. Prof. Knap is investigating the properties of these systems in his CosQuanDyn project. His research focuses on constrained quantum systems that are far from their thermal equilibrium. The constraint for quantum particles in these systems is that they can only take up certain configurations, with others being “forbidden”. New materials with these properties could be used in future to practically realize qubits, the computing modules of quantum computers. Prof. Knap aims to study these systems at theoretical level and thereby lay the foundations for future experiments.

Read the entire press release on the TUM Website.