Three Nikhef projects receive funding from NWO within the ENW-XL Open Competition. These include the future Einstein Telescope, research into the Higgs boson and research into the universe.

Read more: NWO-XL grants for three groundbreaking research lines at Nikhef

The awards were announced today. A total of 21 research consortia in this 2023/2024 round will have the chance to make a breakthrough thanks to funding from the ENW-XL Open Competition. A total of €64 million has been allocated, and each project will be allocated between 1 and 3 million euros. With the funding received, it is up to the researchers to start, strengthen or expand groundbreaking and innovative world-class research lines together.

Nikhef was involved in the last selection round with three applications. All three have now been honoured. ‘This is fantastic news,’ says Nikhef’s institute manager Arjen van Rijn.

Enabling Einstein Telescope to listen to the full Universe

Prof.  S. Hild, MU/Nikhef

Co-applicants: Prof.  C.F.F. (Chris) van den Broeck, Prof. A. (Alessandro) Bertolini, Dr. H.J. (Henk Jan) Bulten, Dr. A. (Anuradha) Samajdar, Prof.  A. (Andreas) Freise, Dr. S. (Stefan) Danilishin, Dr. M. (Maria) Haney, Dr. G. (Gideon) Koekoek, Dr. C. (Conor) Mow-Lowry, Dr. J. (Jessica) Steinlechner, Dr. S. (Sebastian) Steinlechner, Dr. B. (Bas) Swinkels, Dr. N. (Niels) van Bakel

The Einstein Telescope will be Europe’s Gravitational Wave observatory guaranteeing unprecedent observing capacity for most of the the 21st century, being able to listen for instance to colliding black holes from the whole Universe. In this project we will develop and qualify innovative technologies essential to enable the mindboggling sensitivity of the Einstein Telescope. A special focus will be set on the low-frequency end of the observation band, where improvement factors of up to a million are needed compared to the current LIGO/Virgo detector.