The Simons Foundation has announced its support for research at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICCUB) to delve into the intricate relationship between geometry and turbulence in astrophysics and beyond. This funding marks a significant milestone as it is the first time the Simons Foundation is directly funding research in Spain or southern Europe.
ICREA Research Professor Raul Jimenez will lead this ambitious project, which aims to unravel the complexities of cosmic phenomena through the lens of geometry. The research will primarily focus on astrophysical contexts, seeking to provide deeper insights into the turbulent and complex nature of the cosmos.
The collaboration will bring together esteemed scientists from the Simons Flatiron Institute, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and ETH Zurich in Switzerland. This international partnership underscores the global significance of the research and the collaborative effort to advance our understanding of the universe.
The funding provided to the ICCUB is equivalent to an ERC senior grant and will be utilized to support PhD students and postdoctoral researchers at the institute. This investment in young researchers is expected to foster innovation and drive forward the scientific exploration of cosmic complexity.
Following the recent award of the Unit of Excellence Maria de Maeztu to the ICCUB, this new funding from the Simons Foundation further solidifies the institute's position as a leading research centre. The ICCUB is proud to be among the first recipients of funding from a prestigious US research institution, highlighting its commitment to excellence and pioneering research.
More about the Simons Foundation:
The Simons Foundation’s mission is to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences.
Since its founding in 1994 by Jim and Marilyn Simons, the foundation has been a champion of basic science through grant funding, support for research and public engagement. We believe in asking big questions and providing sustained support to researchers working to unravel the mysteries of the universe.
More about Raul Jimenez:
Raúl Jiménez (Madrid, 1967) obtained his PhD at the Niels Bohr Institute in 1995, then moved to the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh were he held a PPARC Advanced Fellowship. He then went to the US where he joined the faculty of the Physics & Astronomy departments of Rutgers and the University of Pennsylvania. He joined ICREA in Sept 2007. He was a Radcliffe fellow at Harvard in 2015-2016. Among his main contributions to our understanding of the Universe: the first evidence of dark energy from the ages of high redshift galaxies and globular clusters, the origin of dark galaxies, the first clue of how galaxies are assembled as a function of time, the first determination of the expansion history of the Universe, the role of cosmic explosions in the survival of exolife, the role of symmetries in the universe, a lower bound to the cosmological constant and a new model of the universe based on quantum information theory and gravity.
