Gonville & Caius College Fellow Professor Ivan Smith has won an Advanced Grant awarded by the European Research Council (ERC).

Professor Smith is one of nine University of Cambridge recipients, the greatest number of grants won by a UK institution in the 2021 round of funding. Read the full story on the University of Cambridge website.

Advanced Grants are awarded to leading researchers who are established in their field and have a recognised track record of achievements.

Professor Smith’s project is entitled Floer theory beyond Floer (FloerPlus35).

He says: “The proposal seeks to develop newly discovered interactions between three fields: homotopy theory, which concerns `flexible’ properties of geometric spaces; Floer theory, which studies classical dynamics via the analysis of partial differential equations; and algebraic cycles, special subspaces constrained by `rigid’ properties of defining polynomial equations.

“I was very honoured and excited to be awarded the ERC grant. The proposal is guided by very recent developments in symplectic topology which leave a lot of territory unexplored. The funding presents a unique opportunity to reinvigorate existing collaborations, to raise the profile of this emerging area, and to bring new students and postdoctoral researchers into this beautiful part of the mathematical landscape.”

The ERC is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. The 2021 Advanced Grants competition will see funding worth €624 million (£525m) going to 253 leading researchers across Europe. This year, the UK has received grants for 45 projects, Germany 61, the Netherlands 27 and France 26. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion (£13.4bn), as part of the Horizon Europe programme.