Andy Teale, an Assistant Professor and Royal Society University Research Fellow within the School of Chemistry, has been awarded a major €2M Consolidator Grant (CoG) from the European Research Council (ERC).
The ERC CoG scheme aims to identify and support the very best and creative mid-career independent researchers in Europe via 5-year consolidated funding to pursue ground-breaking frontier research.
The grant was awarded for the project "A topological approach to electron correlation in density-functional theories (topDFT)". Density-functional theory (DFT) is the most widely used method to study the electronic structure of complex molecules, solids, and materials. Its use across chemistry, solid-state physics and materials science is a testament to its black-box nature and low cost. However, many important areas remain inaccessible to DFT simulations, including applications to strongly correlated materials and systems in electromagnetic fields. The topDFT project will deliver new conceptual approaches to design the next generation of density-functional methods.
Andy will use this award to significantly extended his research group working on the development of new theoretical approaches. The work will exploit the topology of the electron density to develop new approaches and the implementation of these methods will be carried out in computer programs to allow the accurate simulation of moelcular and solid state systems that cannot presently be treated reliably with density-functional methods.
For further details see: https://erc.europa.eu/news/erc-2017-consolidator-grants-results
Posted on Thursday 30th November 2017