SISSA has been awarded another European Research Council (ERC) grant. Professor Alberto Maspero's project, valued at almost one and a half million euros, is set to commence in 2024 and will span five years. Thanks to this result, the number of ERC grants awarded to the School since the ERC was founded in 2007 has risen to 31. SISSA is thus confirmed as one of the Italian institutions with the highest number of ERC grants compared to the number of researchers.
Alberto Maspero, a mathematician, earned his doctoral degree through a joint program between the University of Zurich and the State University of Milan. His project, titled ‘Generating unstable dynamics in dispersive Hamiltonian fluids’ (GUnDHam), aims to rigorously demonstrate the emergence of instability phenomena in certain dispersive Hamiltonian equations governing the dynamics of fluids on large spatial scales, including water waves and geophysical fluids.
GUnDHam will specifically focus on understanding how energy cascades related to turbulence, modulational instabilities, and rare extreme phenomena, such as the formation of anomalous waves, are generated. “Despite these phenomena being commonly observed in oceans, planetary atmospheres, and replicated in experimental laboratories, their mathematical description is still in its infancy. The goal is to contribute to bridging this knowledge gap by providing a solid theoretical foundation for their mathematical understanding” explains Maspero.
Maspero is among 308 winners of a Consolidator Grant, funding designed to support outstanding scientists at a stage in their careers when they are consolidating their research groups to pursue their most promising scientific ideas. These grants, totalling EUR 627 million, are an integral part of the Horizon Europe Programme.