The VILLUM FOUNDATION has just selected new Villum Young Investigators among younger, especially talented researchers. This year, 21 new Villum Young Investigators receive a total of 204.5 million DKK.

The recipients at Aarhus University are:

Associate Professor  Wolf Eisenhardt,  Department of Bioscience
Grant: 10 mill. DKK

Project: Explaining the biological hyper-diversity of tropical rainforests using the Tree of Life

The tropical rainforest is the biologically richest nature on Earth, harbouring 50% of all living species, for unknown reasons. This mysterious richness can be explained using the Tree of Life, which shows the evolutionary history of species. The aim of the project is to reconstruct the Tree of Life for plants and use it for the first time to explain the richness of rainforests at a global scale. The grant will fund four researchers working together to solve this long-standing biological riddle.

Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics
Grand: 10 mill. DKK

Project: Symmetry Breaking in Mathematics

‘Symmetry breaking’ describes the process of passing from a state of high symmetry to one with less symmetry, and it plays an important role in modern theoretical physics. The aim of the project is a mathematical description and study of symmetry breaking in terms of representations of reductive Lie groups, with possible applications to questions in partial differential equations and analytic number theory. The grant will fund the recipient, one postdoc and two PhD students.