Dr Akiko Nishiyama from the Department of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics at the Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Applied Informatics of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń received a prestigious grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

The grant awarded as part of the “Overseas Research Fellowships” competition is received for the project “Broadband and highly sensitive spectroscopy of free-radicals and short-lived molecules using an infrared frequency comb”. Its aim is to study chemical reactions involving free radicals using broadband spectroscopy, based on the combining of optical frequencies.

The project will be implemented from April 2019 in the Laboratory of Ultrafast Spectroscopy in cooperation with scientific units from Germany and Italy. The research results will help explain the formation processes of prebiotic molecules in the interstellar space – which is important for astrochemistry and the theory of life formation in the Universe.