The Optoelectronics Research Centre's (ORC) Peter Kazansky and Nikolay Zheludev are two of five researchers from the University of Southampton to win European Research Council’s (ERC) Advanced Grants totaling more than €12 million ($14 million). Kazansky, head of the Physical Optics group in the ORC, has been awarded €2.5 million ($2.9 million) for his project entitled ENIGMA (ENgIneerinG MAterial properties with advanced laser direct writing). The project will examine the interaction between intense ultrashort light pulses and matter at, or below, the wavelength scale, reaching states of matter found only deep in the cores of the Earth and other planets. “The ENIGMA project will push the frontiers of laser material processing to an unprecedented level of control and will develop a family of devices that will feed into the future of optics, electronics, and computing,” Kazansky said. Zheludev, deputy director of the ORC and head of the Nanophotonics and Metamaterials Research Group, has been awarded €2.57 million ($3 million) for his FLEET (FLying ElectromagnEtic Toroids) project, which will study the generation, detection, and interaction with matter of flying toroids, a type of light pulses never experimentally studied before. ”This project represents an exciting opportunity to advance optics and electromagnetism in a radically new direction since Hertz, Marconi, Popov, and Tesla developed the groundbreaking technology for generating, detecting, and communicating with transverse electromagnetic waves,” Zheludev said. Also receiving ERC Advanced Grants are Lajos Hanzo for his QuantCom research project; Malcolm Levitt for his FunMagResBeacons (Functionalised Magnetic Resonance Beacons for Enhanced Spectroscopy and Imaging) project; and Tony Brown for a project entitled TerrACE, focused on the long-term creation, maintenance, and use of ancient agricultural terraces. “I am absolutely delighted and congratulate Nikolay, Lajos, Peter, Tony, and Malcolm on their success with these prestigious awards,” said University of Southampton president and vice-chancellor Sir Christopher Snowden. “The ERC represents an important source of research funding and these successes reflect the very high quality of research at our university.” The European Research Council, set up by the European Union (EU) in 2007, is the first European funding organization for frontier research. ERC Advanced Grants are awarded to established, leading principal investigators that need long-term funding to pursue groundbreaking, high-risk projects. They are awarded under the “excellent science” pillar of Horizon 2020, the EU's research and innovation program.