PEOPLE
INFN PROJECT TO STUDY NEUTRINOS RECEIVES EUROPEAN FUNDING
Interview with Manuela Cavallaro, researcher at the Southern National Laboratories (LNS) of the INFN in Catania, who has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant 2016
When Manuela Cavallaro heard that the European Research Council (ERC) had awarded her the ERC Starting Grant 2016 (ERC-2016-SGT), her reaction was a mixture of enthusiasm and incredulity. The prestigious award supports young talented researchers who are starting their careers. The physicist from Catania, a researcher at the INFN Southern National Laboratories (LNS), received the grant for research in fundamental physics. The name of the project is NURE (NUclear REactions for neutrinoless double beta decay) and the € 1,271 million grant is the full amount of funding requested. There were almost 3,000 applications and the European Research Council has awarded 325 ERC-2016-SGTs to young European researchers, for a total of € 485 million. We asked this young researcher at the LNS to explain the importance of this scientific project.
What is the ERC-funded project about?
This is a fundamental physics project that spans the fields of neutrino and nuclear physics. It acts a bit like a bridge between these two different aspects of physics and the ERC was impressed by this feature of the project.
At the LNS we will conduct experiments on systems relevant to double beta decay, an extremely rare decay process that occurs spontaneously, in which a nucleus is transformed into another nucleus. The idea behind the project is to use nuclear reactions, in particular double charge
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NEWS
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