Mats Carlsson is awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for the project Physics of the Solar Chromosphere.
Carlsson plans to spend the grant of 2.49 million Euros over a period of five years to use the IRIS satellite, to be launched in December 2012, as well as numerical simulations, to solve several mysteries of the solar chromosphere:
- Which types of non-thermal energy dominate in the chromosphere and beyond?
- How does the chromosphere regulate mass and energy supply to the corona and the solar wind?
- How do magnetic flux and matter rise through the chromosphere?
- How does the chromosphere affect the free magnetic energy loading that leads to solar eruptions?
Prestigious grant
The ERC advanced grants are extremely competetive and prestigeous grants. This is the 4th year they are awarded. In the first tree years, a total of 14 Norwegian researchers in all fields of science and scholarship received ERC Advanced Grants.
Grants are awarded only to the most outstanding European researchers. The criteria are solely the scientific quality of the applicant and the groundbreaking quality of his/her proposed research project.