After being honored by the Society of Austrian Chemists (GÖCH) and the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), it was her second award ceremony within two months, but Yolanda Salinas was “really very nervous” when her Cardinal Christoph Schönborn received the ” Cardinal Innitzer Promotion Prize” for her research work.
Salinas received the award together with her JKU research colleague Richard Küng and six other researchers. The fact that two of the eight coveted nationwide prizes went to the JKU shows the dominance of the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Küng jokes.
“Who would have thought that I would one day receive a prize from Cardinal Schönborn?” says young researcher Küng, who works at the Institute for Integrated Circuits. “Although, I served as a minister when I was young and walked the Way of St. James, so maybe the award from a cardinal was a logical consequence.”
Small machines in the body
Since 2015, Yolanda Salinas has been researching nanoparticles at the Institute for Polymer Chemistry, focusing on the application of these microscopically small structures in medicine. Their nanoparticles are used in the treatment of cancer or are introduced into the human body as small motorized vehicles. There they can be controlled depending on where their load of active ingredients is needed. “The most important thing is that the nanoparticles are biodegradable or excretable,” says the award winner. “We don’t want to harm the environment or the body.”
Richard Küng has dedicated himself entirely to the holy grail of computer science, quantum computers. In the future, these should solve certain tasks faster than conventional computers. But research is still a long way from the ideal quantum computer. “The quantum computers that we currently have are still quite small and not particularly powerful,” says Küng. He has set himself the task of exploring the limits of the currently available quantum computers by pitting them against supercomputers in complicated calculations.
In June, his research brought him to Google’s headquarters in California for “arguably the best and fastest” quantum computer to date. Küng published his results together with colleagues from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Google Quantum AI in the scientific journal “Science”. It was already his second “Science” publication this year. With the Innitzer Prize, his “harvest year” – where he brings in the fruits of his labor – may have begun, Küng speculates.
Source: Nachrichten
