Press Release | WIAS | 01-11-2010

Alexander Mielke has been awarded ERC Advanced Grant

Alexander Mielke has been awarded ERC Advanced Grant

 

Professor Alexander Mielke, Deputy Director of WIAS, has been awarded an Advanced Investigators Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). Mielke receives 1,4 million euros for the development of mathematical models to describe physical phenomena in a more comprehensive way. Those models could, for instance, help optimize components in photovoltaics.

In order to describe the coherency between the two antithetic quantities energy and entropy, Mielke comments on his desk in terms of physics: "Entropy describes diffuse processes through which everything tries to find its equilibrium. If we take my desk, this means that the chaos increases to the maximum - until everything on the desk is spread out nice and evenly." If energy is applied to the desk, in the form of tidying up, the entropy starts to decrease locally. Up to now, there are only mathematical models that factor in either energy or entropy, but not both. Mielke's work aims at creating a mathematical framework to describe the interaction of both principles. An all-embracing model of this kind could serve as a basis for many fields of technology and lead to new developments.

Kontakt:

Prof. Dr. Alexander Mielke

Weierstrass Institute

Mohrenstraße 39, 10117 Berlin
Phone: +49-30-20372 563
Alexander.Mielkewias-berlin.de

www.wias-berlin.de