Slovenian researcher gets EUR 1.4m grant from ERC
Ljubljana, 27 July - The European Research Council (ERC) has granted EUR 1.4m to Jaka Tušek, a researcher at the Ljubljana Faculty of Engineering, to conduct a five-year study on maximising the efficiency of elastocaloric cooling.
The project dubbed SUPERCOOL - Superelastic Porous Structures for Efficient Elastocaloric Cooling will allow Tušek to set up his first independent research team of six, the Ljubljana University said in a press release on Friday
Their work will focus on key elements of elastocaloric cooling technology, which shows great potential as an alternative to the most widely used vapour-compression refrigeration.
Tušek's objective is to develop an elastocaloric cooling device, potentially the biggest breakthrough in cooling in the past century, said the press release. The device would be more effective and environmentally-friendly than those used today.
The ERC announced this morning the names of the winners of its Starting Grant 2018 programme. Just over 400 projects were selected out of 3,170 applications from around the globe. The ERC will provide more than EUR 603m in total.
The goal of the Starting Grant programme is to support the best researchers from all fields at the start of their careers.
Currently, six projects in Slovenia are backed by ERC funds, worth more than EUR 7.5m in total.