One of the largest ever  Dutch investments in
fundamental science was announced this week: scientists of TU Delft and Leiden
University will be embarking on the research programme “Frontiers of
Nanoscience” (NanoFront) to explore the frontiers of nanoscience in the coming
ten years. A second program on "Theoretical
physics of matter at all scales", in which Casimir scientist at Leiden
University participate together with colleagues at the University of Amsterdam
and Utrecht received M€ 18.3 to fund a research program covering the coming ten
years. The largest funding went to the Leiden/Delft consortium NanoFront, headed
by Prof. Cees Dekker, and which is entirely integrated into the Casimir
Research School. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science announced that
it will be funding 36 million euro from the ‘Gravity Programme’ of the
Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). The two universities
are jointly making an amount of 15 million euro available to NanoFront.