Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) has been awarded a new ERC Starting Grant in the latest call from the European Research Council (ERC) for a scientific research project named MUST, focused on large-eddy simulation and the phenomenon of turbulence. These prestigious grants are aimed at early-career researchers with promising scientific track records who wish to launch projects of excellence in Europe.
The MUST project (Modelling Uncertainty in Sub-grid Turbulence), led by Alberto Vela Martín from UC3M's Department of Aerospace Engineering, tackles one of nature's most universal yet complex phenomena: turbulence. Although it has been researched for centuries and the mathematical equations governing it are fully known, predicting it reliably remains a major challenge. The problem stems not from a lack of data or computational power, but from a theoretical gap in understanding how it should be modelled. In this context, Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) has become an indispensable tool in science and engineering for predicting turbulence. Yet, its very success poses a paradox: models inconsistent with fundamental data often perform remarkably well, showing that we still lack a clear understanding of what makes a turbulence model succeed.
To address this limitation, the MUST project proposes a fundamental shift in approach: incorporating uncertainty as a core design principle for models. The research will develop a new LES simulation framework from first principles, combining the classical equations of fluid physics (the Navier–Stokes equations) with a statistical description of unresolved small-scale motions. In this way, turbulence will no longer be represented by a single fixed or deterministic outcome, but as an ensemble of physically consistent possibilities. This approach will define the true limits of model predictability and separate, for the first time, the irreducible uncertainty inherent to the modelling process from avoidable modelling errors.
Within this new framework, models will be compared to data in a manner consistent with the intrinsically chaotic nature of turbulence, setting a new standard for their development, training, and testing. “By uniting physics and statistics, MUST will attempt to establish a new paradigm where success or failure is explained through the physical mechanisms governing the flow of uncertainty and information across scales. Beyond fluid mechanics, this paradigm will impact the modelling of complex systems more broadly, offering a universal framework to predict while embracing uncertainty,” explains Professor Alberto Vela Martín.
This research grant highlights UC3M's commitment to research of excellence. In total, UC3M has secured 23 ERC projects since the creation of the program (9 Starting Grants, 9 Consolidator Grants, and 5 Proof of Concept) with overall funding exceeding 29 million euros.
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