After the Starting Grant received in 2011, Pasquale Calabrese, Professor in statistical physics at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, proves his scientific excellence with the award of a Consolidator Grant. In this way SISSA reaches 21 grants in ten years of activity of the European Research Council - ERC. The project, worth 1.5 million Euros, will last for five years and will start next September.
«I am proud that SISSA always ranks at the highest levels in competitive programs, such as the prestigious European Research Council grants» SISSA Director Stefano Ruffo said. «With the success achieved in this Consolidator Call, SISSA gets its 21st grant since the foundation of the European Research Council ten years ago. This is a great result given the small size of the School, with only about 80 faculty members. The fact that Professor Calabrese has obtained two of these grants makes the result even more remarkable.»
Born in 1976, Pasquale Calabrese in one of the youngest full professors in Physics in Italy. After a degree in Physics at the University of Pisa and a PhD at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Calabrese spent a few years at the Universities of Oxford and Amsterdam. Later he went back to Pisa, but he moved to Trieste in 2014 carrying with him the previous ERC grant. The project "NEMO - New States of Entangled Matter Out of Equilibrium" will allow Calabrese to study, from the theoretical point of view, the role of entanglement in non-equilibrium quantum systems and the link of this phenomenon with thermodynamics and entropy in order to understand the emergence of statistical mechanics in closed systems. These studies are crucial for the understanding of the behavior of ultra-cool atomic gas, a frontier of quantum technologies. Thanks to NEMO, the professor will benefit from the collaboration of six post-doctoral researchers for two to three year periods.
Calabrese is among the 329 researchers awarded with a Consolidator Grant. This funding is aimed at outstanding researchers of any nationality and age, with at least seven and up to twelve years of experience after PhD, and a scientific track record showing great promise. Thirty-three Italian researchers have been awarded but only 14 of them are based in Italy. Only Germans have achieved better results with 55 grants. The ERC has evaluated 2,538 research proposals this time, out of which 13% will be funded, for a total budget worth 630 million Euros.