Prof. Serim Ilday of UNAM is awarded European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant to support her research in the field of condensed matter physics. She has been granted EUR 1,5 million over the next five years to explore complexity of dynamic adaptive systems.
She will be using the EU funds to address a profoundly fundamental question at the interface between condensed matter and statistical physics: “When a dynamic adaptive system is faced with multiple choices, which one will it choose? and why?”
She will scrutinize this question using a state-of-the-art colloidal system that she and her coworkers developed in 2017. The system allowed observation of first dynamic adaptive colloidal crystals with a plethora of complex patterns and behavior. Using the ERC funding, Prof. Ilday and her team will draw the “fitness landscape” of these crystals to understand and control emergent phenomena far from equilibrium
