Everything went as planned? You never plan these grants being awarded! 

Giulio Monaco is Full Professor of experimental matter physics at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Padua and he was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant in 2021. Peihao Sun, with a MSCA Individual fellowship, works as a post-doc in his lab.

They both work with X-rays to study peculiar properties of glasses. In particular one of their goals is to observe a new out-of-equilibrium state of condensed matter which has never been observed before: these objects are called ideal glasses, and they might have very interesting technological applications, in quantum computers for example or digital memories. 

“I think we have some preliminary results that make us confident that it might be possible to get there, but we still have a long way to go” says Prof. Monaco, who moved to Padua in 2020 and was awarded the ERC Advanced Grant right after that. “Before coming to Padua I’ve spent 14 years of my life in France, in Grenoble. For family-related reasons I decided to come back to Italy: my wife and my daughter are in Padua. I first moved to Trento where I stayed for 8 years. I wrote the project the last year of my staying in Trento and the first year here in Padua. I think it was matching my change of University very well, but it was definitely not planned”. 

Peihao was a PhD student at Stanford University, in California. “During my PhD research I met Prof. Monaco, who helped me a lot, actually. He was in my defense committee and we were exchanging a lot in terms of scientific ideas. I decided to apply for a Marie Curie Fellowship working with Prof. Monaco”. 

Winning the most competitive and prestigious European Research Grant is not something happens everyday. “I’m not sure there is a receipt I’m able to tell, or a secret way of doing this. I think you start with an idea that you think is reasonable or convincing and then you just go through the writing of the project with patience. In particular during the second step of the application, I think the interactions with the Offices here in Padua have been really helpful”. 

Peihao has one year and a half left in Prof. Monaco’s lab. “The goal for me was having an international experience and I already learned a lot from Prof. Monaco’s group”. 

Whether it’s winning a big grant or observing something which has never been observed before, like ideal glasses, you have to go one step at a time, says Peihao. “For questions as big as this one you can never say for sure that they are what they are, but we are on our way. We do things step by step, in a very scientific way, to achieve our goal”. 

Watch the whole interview with Giulio and Peihao.