Open Competition Domain Science funds curiosity driven fundamental research form all the disciplines of the Science Domain. M-grants are intended for innovative, high-quality, fundamental research and/or studies involving matters of scientific urgency.

The UvA Faculty of Science projects that receive a grant are:

Trapped ion qudits for quantum computation

dr. R. Gerritsma (IoP)

Trapped ions are among the most accurate quantum computers to date. However, scaling up the system to include many ions has proven hard. We will improve the scalability by encoding qudits in the ions, instead of the usual qubits. In this way, each ion can carry more quantum information. To do so, we will use an ion species with a large nuclear spin, that can encode many qudit states. This ion has not been used before in trapped ion quantum computing. We will use state-of-the-art optical tweezers to implement quantum operations between the qudits.

GLOBE – GLObal mapping of the natural and anthropogenic Baseline for Erosion

dr. R.F. Ott (IBED)

Erosion is a major environmental problem threating food production, degrading rivers by filling them with sediment, pesticides, and fertilizers, and exacerbating climate change by releasing previously stored CO2 from soils. The GLOBE project will map natural and human-induced erosion globally at an unprecedented resolution to quantify how (un)sustainable our current land use practices are. By harnessing machine learning techniques and erosion data compilations, GLOBE will produce detailed erosion maps. These maps will not only reveal the impact of human activities like agriculture, deforestation, and mining on our landscapes but also inform and guide sustainable land management policies. 

Mapping, modelling and mitigating schistosomiasis risk in seasonal rice agriculture landscapes

dr. N.C. Starkloff  (IBED)

Rice agriculture enhances food security and climate change resilience, with the unfortunate consequence of creating the perfect habitat for waterborne tropical diseases, e.g., schistosomiasis has an infection cycle facilitated by aquatic snails. Rice farmers experience increased schistosomiasis risk, yet it is unclear what characteristics of rice fields promote this risk. To address this knowledge gap, we use field, laboratory, mathematical and social science approaches to evaluate the seasonal risk of schistosomiasis across the rice paddy landscape in northwestern Tanzania. These data will be used to co-design interventions combating schistosomiasis transmission in collaboration with farming communities to ensure success and sustainability.

When a Higgs boson meets a top quark

prof. dr. M. Vreeswijk & prof.dr. W. Verkerke (IoP/Nikhef)

In the coming years, the LHC at CERN provides three times the number of collisions we have now. This allows us to study nature at the femto-meter scale where quantum-interactions are described Standard Model (SM) of Particle Physics. We focus on collisions in which Higgs bosons or top quarks are produced, together with a Z boson, which are the most heaviest particles known today. We develop a new deep-learning Transformer technique to combine the measurements of these processes that will optimize the sensitivity to our search for physics beyond the SM, described by the framework of Effective Field Theory.