MERCUR funds four new Cooperative Research Projects with around 2.8 million euros

The Mercator Research Center Ruhr (MERCUR) is funding four new cooperative research projects within the University Alliance (UA) Ruhr, in which scientists from TU Dortmund University are involved, with around 2.8 million euros. The projects were approved in December. The participating researchers are using the MERCUR funding to establish long-term research networks within the UA Ruhr. More than half of the funding is provided by Stiftung Mercator, the other part is financed proportionally by the universities. In the cooperation funding line, three projects involving TU scientists were approved for two years. 

In the project "Composite collective excitations in correlated quantum materials", scientists from the physics departments of TU Dortmund and Ruhr-Universität Bochum are addressing a current problem in solid-state physics: all important phase states of matter result from the interplay of many particles and their interactions. Different phases often compete with each other, resulting in special correlation effects and thus in the formation of matter properties that go beyond the sum of the properties of the individual parts. The goal is to understand, control and use this "symbiosis". The physicists Prof. Götz S. Uhrig and Prof. Zhe Wang from TU Dortmund University are involved in the project, the funding amounts to around 490,000 euros.

Contact persons

The contact persons at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum are Prof. Dr. Anna Böhmer and Prof. Dr. Ilya Eremin.