The microscopic arrangement of atoms in a material has great impact on its behaviour. 2D materials are a particular class of materials formed by few-atoms thick layers stacked on top of each other, and offer great flexibility for engineering the arrangement of atoms at the microscopic level. The researcher investigated different 2D materials to find out how individual atoms provide the added functionality required for information-processing technologies of the future.

Accessing medicines worldwide using solar light The current pharmaceutical industry uses damaging fossil resources. In this research project I used solar energy to synthesize important chemicals, such as building blocks for medicines by combining artificial photosynthesis with biocatalysts in bio-hybrid devices. I have developed a new method to construct biohybrid electrodes and combined these with an organic solar cell. This research contributed to finding new pathways for the generation of medicines without using fossil resources.

The primordial Universe offers a unique opportunity to test physics of the microscopic world with observations on cosmic scales. In this project, I have systematically looked into the cosmological correlators from the baby Universe, i.e. spatial correlations of matter distributions in the earliest moment of the Universe. The focus is the observable imprints of fundamental symmetries in these correlators, and the main computational tool is a new approach called the cosmological bootstrap. The research output contains a complete set of detectable predictions from the primordial Universe, and the first observational data analysis for these new signatures.

What happens when DNA testing meets the intricate tapestry of indigenous/peasant peoples kinship? This project delves into Peru’s Genetic Data Bank (GDB), exploring its implications for historical reparations. Designed to match genetic profiles of human remains with living relatives, the GDB operates on the assumption that family ties reflect biogenetic inheritance; however, indigenous/peasant people’s kinship challenges this notion. This project seeks to explore the following questions from an anthropological perspective: How do indigenous/peasant rights intersect with the control of genetic information? What roles does kinship play in the quest for reparative justice?

Society faces the enormous challenge of reconciling the reduction of carbon emissions with an increasingly larger number of power-hungry data centers, driving our digital economy. The researcher will fundamentally investigate how spin-polarized supercurrents are rectified in superconducting diodes and so empower a new generation of energy-efficient computers and quantum technologies.