Conny Aerts from KU Leuven and Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard from Aarhus University have won the 2022 Kavli Award for Astrophysics. They will share the prize with Roger Ulrich from UCLA Division of Astronomy.
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters today announced the 2022 Kavli Prize Laureates in the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience.
Two ERC grantees are among the eleven laureates from across the world. Conny Aerts had previously received two ERC Advanced Grants researching massive stars (2008) and exploring asteroseismology (2015). Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard received an ERC grant in 2010 and has also worked on asteroseismology.
Their work is essential to our understanding of stellar evolution. With methods of asteroseismology, astrophysicists are able to exploit the properties of stellar vibrations to probe the interior physics of stars and provide state-of-the-art modelling of stars.
The Kavli Prize honors scientists for breakthroughs in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience – transforming our understanding of the big, the small and the complex. Until now six ERC grantees have won this award since its first edition in 2008.
Kavli Award winners will share $1 million per category.
About the ERC
The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialisation.
The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. Since 1 November 2021, Maria Leptin is the President of the ERC. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion, as part of the Horizon Europe programme, under the responsibility of the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel.
