Milan Alan is one of the five Leiden researchers who has been awarded a Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). This grant of up to two million euros will enable him to continue and expand his scientific research. 

Physicist Milan Allan has already done a lot of successful research into superconductivity: an almost magical property of specific materials that enables them to conduct electricity without losing energy when they are cooled below a certain temperature. Understanding superconductivity has been a quest in physics since its discovery in 1911. Allan and his group are building instruments to measure the properties of superconducting materials. Until last year, it was thought that superconductivity occurs when electrons pair up. But last year Allan’s instruments showed that paired electrons also occur above the temperature at which superconductivity occurs. Allan will use the ERC grant to build a special microscope that can observe paired electrons above this temperature.