ERC Starting Grant for physicist Toma Susi

Finnish physicist Toma Susi has received the prized ERC Starting Grant of the European Research Council that funds pioneering basic research. The five-year grant of 1.5 million euros allows him to establish a research group at the Faculty of Physics of the University of Vienna to create a new way to manipulate materials at the atomic level. "ERC-Grants are an important indicator for the international competitiveness of universities and enable leading-edge research. I am pleased that the University of Vienna has now been awarded in total 40 ERC Grants", said Rector Heinz W. Engl. Toma Susi - Materials are defined by their chemical structure - which atoms are placed where. To control their properties, one can either exchange atoms, or change their arrangement. The only tool to directly manipulate individual atoms, the scanning probe microscope, has since the late 1980s been able to move weakly bound atoms over surfaces held far below room temperature.