Home » Coşkun Kocabaş Receives Bilkent University’s 5th ERC Grant

Coşkun Kocabaş Receives Bilkent University’s 5th ERC Grant

Dr. Coşkun Kocabaş of the Department of Physics has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant. Dr. Kocabaş will be using the funding provided by the council for five years for his research project, “Graphene-Based Smart Surfaces: From Visible to Microwave.”

ERC funding is regarded as the most prestigious research funding in Europe and aims to stimulate scientific excellence in Europe by supporting the very best researchers in any field of research. Excellence is the sole criterion for selection; there are neither thematic priorities nor geographical quotas for funding. ERC competitions are open to top researchers from anywhere in the world.

In his project, Dr. Kocabaş proposes a new class of active surfaces capable of real-time electrical control of their appearance in a very broad spectrum ranging from visible to microwave, covering six orders of magnitude in wavelength. Graphene—single-atom-thick carbon—is the key material for realizing this ambitious goal. Using these active surfaces, Dr. Kocabaş and his group will be developing adaptive camouflage systems.

Since the start of the ERC funding program in 2007, Dr. Kocabaş’s grant is the 5th ERC grant received by Bilkent University and the 13th such grant received by researchers working in Turkey.