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This research scholarship is given every year to up to 17 scientists across the globe and is designed to inspire leading personalities to work in their respective research areas in Australia. The research scholarship is linked to a professorship at an Australian university. In the case of Hanns-Christoph-Nägerl, this comes from the University of Queensland, which is ranked 65th globally in the Times Higher Education Ranking of the world’s best universities.
According to the Australian Research Council, the expertise of the physicist would enable Australia to keep pace with the efforts of other countries to develop quantum technologies on the basis of cold atom and cold molecule physics. It remains to be seen whether Nagerl moves to Australia or remains loyal to his longstanding home in Innsbruck. In recent years, Hanns-Christoph Nägerl and his team succeeded in demonstrating how one can produce quantum gases from molecules with a high particle density and low temperature in the nanokelvin range. Nägerl is now in the process of realizing molecular quantum simulations in order to reveal complex many-particle quantum processes directly in experiments. For example, these processes are behind high-temperature superconductivity in solids which have remained unexplained up until now. They also enable or prevent electronic transport in future electronic circuits and are relevant for the formation of new types of superfluids.
