The electronics of the future meets the countryside formation of the past with the VILLUM FOUNDATION’s nomination of the latest two Aarhus University members of the Young Investigator Programme. Two postdoctoral fellows at Science and Technology, Aarhus University, have been granted a total of DKK 17.5 million by the VILLUM FOUNDATION’s Young Investigator Programme. They were formally honoured at the VILLUM FOUNDATION’s presentation of the Villum Kann Rasmussen Annual Award for Technical and Scientific Research on Monday 23 January 2017 at 16.00–18.30.

Sixteen selected researchers under forty years of age will this year receive between DKK 7 million and DKK 10 million for their efforts in science and technology research. The programme was established in 2011 to target funds to talented young researchers – from both Denmark and abroad. The projects cover fields from mathematics and photographic techniques to chemistry, horticultural sciences and biology, as well as physics and astronomy. They will be carried out at the University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark, Aarhus University, the University of Southern Denmark and Aalborg University.

Postdoctoral Fellow Søren Ulstrup has been awarded DKK 10 million for a project entitled Electronic structure up-close with photoemission at the nanoscale. He works in the field that drives the technological development of ever-smaller electronic components. This development has paved the way for electronic units that make use of architecture at the nanoscale. In his project, Søren Ulstrup aims to create a far better understanding of the quantum mechanical properties that dictate the functionalism of nanoscale electronics. He will do so by creating a new experimental research facility at the ASTRID2 particle accelerator at the Department of Physics and Astronomy. The VILLUM FOUNDATION’s grant makes it possible to appoint one postdoctoral fellow and one PhD student, and to purchase the relevant material.

Vivi Kathrine Pedersen is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Geoscience. In this year’s distribution, she has been awarded DKK 7.5 million for a project entitled The impact of surface processes on the development and collapse of the Scandinavian ice shield. Modelling the sea level of the past and the future is subject to considerable uncertainty. For example, the impact of landscape changes on the ice shields and sea level is unexplored. In this project, modelling the sea level and the ice shields is combined with empirical erosion rates, which provides an opportunity to simulate the development of the Scandinavian ice shield and quantify the interaction between changes in the surface of the Earth, the dynamics of the ice shields, and the sea level. The award will finance two postdoctoral fellows.

Facts
The VILLUM FOUNDATION is a non-profit organisation that supports technical and scientific research, as well as environmental, social and cultural projects in Denmark and abroad. In 2016, the VILLUM FOUNDATION awarded DKK 902 million.
The VILLUM FOUNDATION was established in 1971 by graduate engineer Villum Kann Rasmussen – the founder of VELUX A/S and other companies in the VKR Group, which aim to bring daylight, fresh air and a better environment into people’s everyday lives. The VILLUM FOUNDATION is the majority shareholder of the VKR Group.

Read more about the VILLUM FOUNDATION here.