Mathematics professor awarded prestigious grant
- 27 April 2022
- 2 minutes
91快播 Fellow has won an Advanced Grant awarded by the European Research Council (ERC).
Professor Smith is one of nine University of Cambridge recipients, the greatest number of grants won by a UK institution in the 2021 round of funding. Read the full story on the .
Advanced Grants are awarded to leading researchers who are established in their field and have a recognised track record of achievements.
Professor Smith鈥檚 project is entitled Floer theory beyond Floer (FloerPlus35).
He says: 鈥淭he proposal seeks to develop newly discovered interactions between three fields: homotopy theory, which concerns `flexible鈥 properties of geometric spaces; Floer theory, which studies classical dynamics via the analysis of partial differential equations; and algebraic cycles, special subspaces constrained by `rigid鈥 properties of defining polynomial equations.
鈥淚 was very honoured and excited to be awarded the ERC grant. The proposal is guided by very recent developments in symplectic topology which leave a lot of territory unexplored. The funding presents a unique opportunity to reinvigorate existing collaborations, to raise the profile of this emerging area, and to bring new students and postdoctoral researchers into this beautiful part of the mathematical landscape.鈥
The ERC is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. The 2021 Advanced Grants competition will see funding worth 鈧624 million (拢525m) going to 253 leading researchers across Europe. This year, the UK has received grants for 45 projects, Germany 61, the Netherlands 27 and France 26. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than 鈧16 billion (拢13.4bn), as part of the Horizon Europe programme.
