This year, 19 young research talents has received grants throughout Denmark as part of the VILLUM Young Investigator-programme.

At Aarhus University, four talents receive a Young Investigator grant. The grants are each for five years, and each recipient has managed to show a clearly defined goal with their research. At the same time, it is a requirement that the project must have a scope that is so large that the execution requires the establishment of a research group. At the Faculty of Natural Sciences there are two recipients:

Associate professor Mie Andersen, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS), receives 7,9 mio. DKK for the project: “Machine learning-guided design of materials for low-temperature catalysis”.

The design of a material that can catalyze the conversion of CO2 into fuels or chemicals could help us tackle climate change and our dependence on fossil fuels. The project will contribute to this goal by using theoretical methods based on machine learning to direct the search for a material that can hydrogenate CO2 to methanol at low temperatures. The grant will fund the recipient, one postdoc, two PhD students and computational resources. Read more about the grant and work on the web page at AIAS.

Assistant professor Tina Santl-Temkiv, Department for Biology, receives 5,9 mio DKK for the project: The Effects of Ice Nucleation Proteins on Arctic Clouds (ICARUS):

The influence of aerosols on cloud properties is one the least understood drivers of climate change in the Arctic. During the ICARUS project, the group will investigate microbial aerosols that are highly efficient in forming cloud ice. The data that the work will generate will be included in climate models to help understand how biological aerosols impact the Arctic climate. The grant will fund the development of an ice-nucleation laboratory, one PhD student and two postdocs.