Professor Ruth Britto among four researchers to secure €10 million ERC Synergy Grant

Posted on: 05 November 2024

ERC Synergy Grants support projects that are too ambitious to be carried out by one researcher alone. Instead, a team of up to four Principal investigators combine their skills and resources to tackle major research challenges.

These projects are often interdisciplinary in nature, bringing together those from different countries, institutions, fields, and career stages. This enables the Synergy teams to examine a problem from many different angles and come up with innovative approaches.

Prof. Ruth Britto in Trinity's Front Square.

Prof. Britto will work with colleagues Prof. Francis Brown, University of Oxford; Dr Axel Kleinschmidt, MPI for Gravitational Physics, Potsdam; and Prof. Oliver Schlotterer, Uppsala University, Sweden on their Mathematics of Scattering Amplitudes (MaScAmp) project.

The team will tackle longstanding computational bottlenecks and push the boundaries of numerous areas of theoretical physics, such as quantum field theory, gravity and string theory, as well as inspiring new mathematical research. 

“Scattering amplitudes” are used to produce theoretical predictions necessary in many areas of physics, but the process for deriving them is currently labour intensive and difficult to compute. In addition, the team will develop a widely applicable computer software implementation that will enable physicists to make previously inaccessible predictions for present and future experiments.   

Prof. Ruth Britto, Associate Professor in Trinity’s School of Mathematics, said: “For years, I’ve been probing the structure of scattering amplitudes to try to get a handle on computing them as neatly as possible, in the face of rapidly increasing complexity. I’ve made progress by relying on the mathematics of well-known functions, but we’ve reached the point where it’s clear that we need to develop new mathematics to meet the needs of current and future experiments. 

“Based on our common recognition of an underlying hidden geometry in scattering amplitudes, I am teaming up with colleagues who can develop wholly new mathematical concepts and bring insights from string theory. This grant allows us to commit to a long-term alignment of our separate research goals, and to form an integrated community advancing both physics and mathematics, with concrete computational impact for the current generation of observations in particle physics and gravity.”

Dr Linda Doyle, Provost of Trinity, said: “I am delighted to offer my congratulations to Ruth and her fellow investigators on securing this Synergy grant, which is only the sixth to be funded with the involvement of a researcher based in Ireland. Trinity already has an exceptional record of funding for breakthrough research in mathematics and physics, and this award shows not only the individual excellence of our researchers, but the extent and fruitfulness of their collaborative networks. In an increasingly competitive world, schemes such as ERC Synergy demonstrate that scientific breakthroughs are dependent on the links we foster across disciplines, institutions, and national boundaries.”  

Prof. Sinéad Ryan, Dean of Research at Trinity, added: “I warmly congratulate Ruth on her success in securing a second ERC grant, this time through the Synergy competition. I see it not only as evidence of the talent we have helped to nurture here at Trinity, but of all the work behind the scenes that went into conceiving and developing the project, as well as the teamwork between these four world-leading researchers. 

“The background of the collaboration included visits between Trinity and Oxford facilitated by Trinity’s Hamilton Mathematics Institute Visiting Professor Programme, which is funded by the Simons Foundation. This reminds us that prestigious investigator-led grants rely on a pipeline of consistent national and international research funding and we hope the MaScAmp project will provide impactful return on this investment – not only by offering breakthroughs in the field of theoretical physics, but also by attracting more talent to our shores and providing for the training of a cohort of early career researchers.”

For more information on Trinity's past and present ERC projects, see ERC Awards at Trinity. 

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