Christian Theiler wins SNSF Eccellenza Grant
The Swiss National Foundation’s Eccellenza Professorial Fellowships and SNSF Eccellenza Grants are given each year to “highly qualified young researchers who aspire to a permanent professorship.” The goal is to support these scientists in leading generously funded research projects with their own team at a Swiss higher education institution.
The Eccellenza Grants aim at “researchers in all disciplines who have recently been appointed as tenure-track assistant professors at a Swiss higher education institution.” The Grants offer project funds up to 1,500,000 Swiss francs over five years.
The Eccellenza Professorial Fellowships are aimed “at outstanding researchers in all disciplines who have a doctorate or equivalent qualification and are pursuing an academic career, but who have not yet obtained an assistant professorship.” Along with salaries, the Fellowships fund projects up to 1,000,000 Swiss francs over five years.
This year, Christian Theiler, an Assistant Professor with the Swiss Plasma Center at EPFL has been awarded an Eccellenza Grant, along with another four EPFL Professors.
Theiler’s project is titled: Alternative divertors for improved tokamak operation. “In fusion devices, such as tokamaks, the edge region of the magnetically confined plasma has to simultaneously assure good confinement of the core plasma and guarantee acceptable heat fluxes to the surrounding wall structures”, explains Theiler. “We propose to use EPFL’s Tokamak à Configuration Variable (TCV) to explore alternative magnetic geometries of the tokamak edge region, a promising path to develop a robust tokamak edge solution.”