Richard Brito, PhD student and researcher at CENTRA won the 2013 Gulbenkian's Scientific Research Program. Brito's project, supervised by Vitor Cardoso and Paolo Pani is titled "Weighing Einstein's Messengers," and intends to study the physical consequences of putative massive gravitons.

Until now it has not been possible to isolate gravitons. For this reason it is not possible to know their properties. In particular it is not known if gravitons are massless or massive. A graviton with mass may explain why the expansion of the Universe is accelerating without resorting to the existence of dark energy and can also explain why the cosmological constant is so small (120 times smaller than the theoretically predicted). Therefore the existence of gravitons with mass can have very important consequence in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics and physics of gravitational waves.

Every year the Gulbenkian Foundation, through the Scientific Research Program, rewards young researchers in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Earth Sciences. Besides Richard Brito, two other young researchers were distinguished, Carlos Oliveira from CEMAT and Eduardo Alves from Golp/IPFN, in physics.
 

More information can be found at

http://www.gulbenkian.pt/section65artId1844langId1.html