Bilkent University Department of Physics, UNAM and Neurosciences faculty member, Assistant Prof. Dr. Giovanni Volpe has been awarded a European Research Council’s (ERC) Starting Grant. Dr. Volpe will be using the funding provided by the council for 5 years for his research project titled “Biocompatible and Interactive Artificial Micro- and Nanoswimmers and Their Applications”.
Dr. Volpe will be developing biocompatible microswimmers capable of elaborate behaviors, by engineering their performance when interacting with other particles and with a complex environment, and working nanoswimmers. Therefore, the project will push the frontiers of the current understanding of active matter both at the mesoscopic and at the nanoscopic scale, and will permit Dr. Volpe to develop some technologically disruptive techniques, namely, targeted delivery of cargoes within complex environments, which is of interest for drug delivery and bioremediation, and efficient sorting of chiral nanoparticles, which is of interest for biomedical and pharmaceutical applications.
The ERC funding is regarded as the most prestigious research funding in Europe and has been previously awarded to several Nobel Laureate scientists. The European Research Council provides the most prestigious individual support provided by European Union to encourage the highest quality research in Europe. ERC defines their goals as to support the best of the best in Europe across all fields of science, scholarship and engineering. Therefore, the funding is highly competitive and open to all candidates around the world.
Since the start of the program(2007) Dr. Volpe’s grant is the fourth ERC grant received by Bilkent University and the 12th ERC grant received by researchers working in Turkey.