Mathematics Reader Dario Martelli awarded £1,000,000 grant from European Research Council

Dr Dario Martelli, a Reader in the Theoretical Physics group in the Department of Mathematics at King's College London, has been awarded a prestigious £1,000,000 Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC).

The Starting Grant is awarded across disciplines in Natural and Human Sciences to young researchers that have shown potential to establish themselves as world leaders in their field of study. The grant will allow Dr Martelli to focus his work on a five-year multidisciplinary research project at the interface of string theory and geometry. He will assemble and lead a team that will include two PhD students and two post-doctoral researches. One PhD student has already been selected and will start in January 2013.

Dario joined the Department of Mathematics of King's College in 2010 as a Lecturer in the Theoretical Physics group. Previously he held research positions at CERN in Geneva, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton among others. He was elected to Reader in Theoretical Physics in 2012. Before the ERC Starting Grant, his research was funded by an EPSRC Advanced Fellowship.