It has been announced that the European Research Council (ERC), as part of the additional funding of the ERC Advanced Grant 2023, will fund the research of Prof. Karol Życzkowski from the Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Applied Computer Science at the Jagiellonian University, who has been awarded over 2.25 million Euros for his project entitled ‘Typical and Atypical structures in quantum theory’ (TAtypic).
On 19 June 2024 the grant winner was received by the Rector of the Jagiellonian University Prof. Jacek Popiel, who congratulated him on his success, together with the JU Vice-Rector for Research Prof. Piotr Kuśtrowski and the Dean of the JU Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Applied Computer Science Prof. Ewa Gudowska Nowak.
The ERC Advanced Grant is one of the most prestigious grant competitions in Europe, in which experienced researchers with an established track record apply for grants for ambitious research projects. The results obtained during the implementation of such projects often lead to scientific breakthroughs. Several ERC grants have already been awarded and implemented at the Jagiellonian University, but Prof. Życzkowski’s grant is the first one received within the framework of the Advanced Grant scheme.
Professor Życzkowski's TAtypic project is concerned with quantum mechanics and, in particular, with structures that may be relevant to the development of quantum information theory and quantum technologies. The main objective of the project is to investigate the properties of typical quantum states and channels and to identify distinguished structures with extreme properties useful for quantum information processing.
Besides the JU Institute of Physics, Prof. Karol Życzkowski also works at the Centre for Theoretical Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences and serves as the President of the Kraków Branch of the Polish Academy of Sciences for the 2023-2026 term. He has been a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Essen (1989–1990) and a senior Fulbright Fellow at the University of Maryland, College Park (1997-98). In 2004-2005 he ran a research project at the Perimeter Institute, Waterloo (Ontario). Since 2014 he has topped the list of living Jagiellonian University researchers included in the ranking of world’s Top 2% researchers by Elsevier and Stanford University.
Prof. Życzkowski’s research interests include quantum Information, quantum measurement & entropy, quantum chaos, entanglement and geometry of quantum states, random matrices, complex Hadamard matrices, numerical range and numerical shadow of an operator, nonlinear dynamics and fractals, stochastic vs chaotic dynamics, game theory and voting power as well as financial mathematics. He has co-designed a voting system for the Council of the European Union. Prof. Życzkowski is the author or co-author of over 240 research papers and a number of other publications, including the co-authored monograph Geometry of Quantum States published by Cambridge University Press, as well as three other books.
More information about the ERC grant winner is available on his website.
