News

NWO MEERVOUD grant for Federica Pasquotto

The MEERVOUD programme has been established to help women postdocs become university lecturers.

The mathematician Dr Federica Pasquotto has received a grant from the MEERVOUD sciences programme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) based on her research proposal on invariants and dynamics in symplectic geometry.

Research
According to the MEERVOUD evaluation committee, her research is both original and innovative. Specifically, her research deals with Hamiltonian dynamics using methods taken from symplectic geometry. Pasquotto presented her research proposal convincingly and lucidly, according to the committee.

Pasquotto received a Veni grant from NWO at an earlier stage. This grant was used to develop a mathematical method for the study of periodic movements of physical objects. She recently brought this research project to a successful conclusion.

MEERVOUD
In the Netherlands the percentage of women employed in the sciences decreases as they climb the scientific ladder. The MEERVOUD programme has been established to help women postdocs in the fields of biology, geology, mathematics, computer science and astronomy to become university lecturers. The MEERVOUD programme provides an avenue for creating temporary, part-time (0.8 FTE) university lecturer positions, which are then linked to similar or other scientific positions at the research institution so that the women are guaranteed advancement.

The grant covers 60% of the costs (at a maximum of €210,000) for a university lecturer position for four years. Pasquotto will take up a position in the Mathematical Analysis section.