ERC Consolidator grant for Stefan Witte
The European Research Council has awarded Stefan Witte with an ERC Consolidator Grant for his proposal entitled “Seeing the invisible: light-based 3D imaging of opaque nanostructures”. Witte is an associate professor at the department of physics at the VU Amsterdam and a group leader at the Advanced Research Center for Nanolithography (ARCNL).
Witte will use this grant to develop new imaging methods that will enable high-resolution imaging of nanostructures. Complex nanostructures play an increasingly important role in society, as they form the basis of the integrated circuits found in modern electronic devices such as smartphones. But as such structures become smaller and more complex, accurate characterization of their structure and function becomes challenging.
Witte and his research group will develop imaging techniques that use soft-X-ray radiation as well as acoustic waves, produced by ultrafast laser pulses, to produce 3D images with a resolution well beyond what optical microscopes can achieve, even for structures that are completely opaque to visible light.
About the grant
The ERC Consolidator Grants are awarded to 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. Research must be conducted in a public or private research organisation located in one of the EU Member States or Associated Countries. The funding (average of €2 million per grant), is provided for up to five years and mostly covers the employment of researchers and other staff to consolidate the grantees’ teams.
