Announcing the new Young CAS projects: planetary science and linguistics
We are delighted to announce that Elise Wright Knutsen and Yvonne van Baal have been selected as the new Young CAS Principal Investigators for the 2025-2027 period.
After an especially competitive selection round, CAS is happy to announce two new Young CAS PIs, who will lead projects in planetary science and linguistics.
“This time many applications were really excellent”, explains Camilla Serck-Hanssen, Director at CAS. “The projects show just how much exciting research is happening across Norway. We look forward to welcoming our new fellows and to see their research develop during the project period”.
The Young CAS Grant is awarded twice a year to two early-career researchers to support curiosity-driven, basic research. Each selected project receives NOK 750,000 to facilitate a series of workshops and a two-month research stay at the Centre.
Elise Wright Knutsen, Researcher at Centre for Space Sensors and Systems, University of Oslo, and Yvonne van Baal, Associate Professor at University of Stavanger, will start their Young CAS projects in August 2025.
Elise Wright Knutsen: Near-surface water vapor on Mars; vertical distribution and atmosphere-surface exchange
Elise Knutsen's project aims to find answers to central questions about Mars' current water cycle. The research will focus on understanding how
water vapor moves between the Martian atmosphere and surface, filling important gaps in our knowledge of the Red Planet's climate system.
Using a combination of orbital and surface data alongside advanced modeling techniques, Elise and her team will examine seasonal water vapor patterns, soil moisture levels, and the complex exchange between the Martian surface and atmosphere. The study promises to enhance our understanding of Mars' climate, geochemistry, glaciology, mineralogy, and potential habitability.
"I feel extremely honored to have received the Young CAS Grant," said Knutsen, highlighting how the funding will enhance her research on Mars' water cycle. She is particularly enthusiastic about bringing together an international team of experts in Oslo. "The workshops and research stay will provide a unique chance for us to collaborate and share ideas and insights," she explained.
Yvonne van Baal: A cross-linguistic perspective on definiteness marking in heritage languages
Yvonne van Baal's research takes a new approach to the study of heritage languages—languages acquired naturally alongside a society's majority language. Moving beyond single-language pair analyses, the project will examine how definiteness is marked across multiple heritage language combinations. The project brings together an international team of linguists to develop a comprehensive theoretical model of definiteness marking in multilingual contexts.
The project aims to transform research on definiteness marking in multilingual grammars by developing a theoretical syntactic model that is cross-linguistically valid. Upon receiving the Young CAS Grant, Yvonne expressed her excitement about the collaborative opportunities ahead. "I am very honored to receive this grant and the opportunities it gives me to develop as a young researcher," she said. "I look forward to bringing together experts on various languages and multilingual language pairs, and to investigating the available data from a comparative, cross-linguistic perspective."
Yvonne emphasized that the team will also identify data gaps and develop new hypotheses and methods to investigate previously unstudied language pairs. "I am looking forward to the new knowledge that this project will bring us," she explained.
Are you interested in applying for a Young CAS Grant? Read more about the grant and application process here >