Cumrun Vafa is one of the most renowned theoretical particle physicists in the world. His research in theoretical high-energy physics, quantum gravity and string theory has produced groundbreaking results. In the last ten years, Cumrun Vafa has published several widely cited papers. These include work related to the Swampland program, which allows new conclusions to be drawn about the nature of dark energy in the universe.
Cumrun Vafa is a professor at Harvard University and he researches a wide range of different topics. His field of research includes the formal side of string theory as well as approaches to solving quantum field theories and the phenomenology of particle physics and cosmology. These include, for example, the first construction of orbifold string compactifications, the discovery of black hole microstates in string theory, several groundbreaking results in mathematical physics (mirror symmetry, topological string theory and topological invariants) and the founding of the Swampland program.
His scientific research has been recognized with high-ranking international prizes, including the Dirac Medal of the ICTP-Trieste in 2008, the Dannie Heineman Prize in Mathematical Physics in 2016 and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2017.
"We are delighted to welcome Cumrun Vafa as a Humboldt Award winner," says Dieter Lüst. "We will work together on questions related to the Swampland program. In particular, we will be looking at the question of which effective field theories can be consistently embedded in a quantum gravity theory at low energies. In this context, we are also working on the remarkable proposal that dark energy could imply a fifth, very small dimension of about one micrometer in size."