19 August 2021

Marie Curie grants to Moon, Schmidt and Kock

Research grants

Two postdocs and an associate professor have each won a competitive Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship, which they will carry at our department during the next two years. They will research in spectral gap stability, quantum automorphisms and Quillen's conjecture.

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions supports the opportunity for researchers to do research abroad. The monetary value of each grant is a bit more than 1.5 million DKK.

Read more about the Research Fellowship Programme.

Alvin Moon

Alvin Moon

Alvin Moon is working as a postdoc at the Centre for the Mathematics of Quantum Theory and Albert H. Werner.

Alvin’s project is called ”Ground states, symmetries and dynamics of quantum many-body lattice systems”, which are important theoretical models in condensed matter physics. Recent advances in this field have led to strong mathematical results, such as a justification of the quantum Hall effect and a robust classification of symmetric phases of matter in 1D quantum spin systems.   

His research will improve and extend methods for analysing the dynamics and ground state phases of quantum lattice systems, such as Hastings’s and Wen’s quasi-adiabatic continuation. The result will give new insight into spectral gap stability, symmetric invariants and dynamical locality.

Read more about Alvin

Simon Schmidt

Simon Schmidt

Simon Schmidt is likewise employed as a postdoc at the Centre for the Mathematics of Quantum Theory, working with Laura Mančinska.

Simon’s project is called ”Nonlocality in quantum groups”. His research focuses on quantum automorphisms and quantum isomorphisms. Within the Marie Curie project, he intends to further explore in particular the interactions between quantum groups and quantum information theory.

Read more about Simon

Joachim Kock

Joachim Kock

Joachim Kock is employed as an associate professor at the Copenhagen Centre for Geometry and Topology, working with Jesper Michael Møller.

Joachim’s project is about the homotopy theory of finite groups, in particular with higher-categorical generalisations of subgroup posets.

The ultimate goal is Quillen's conjecture, open since 1974: {\em For G a finite group and p a prime number, if the geometric realisation of the poset of non-trivial p-subgroups of G is contractible, then G has a non-trivial normal p-subgroup.} The significance of the conjecture lies in the subtle connections between group theory, homotopy theory and combinatorics that it expresses and exemplifies.

Read more about Joachim