Career News
Eleven AcademiaNet members receive ERC Advanced Grants
Last week, the European Research Council (ERC) announced the results of the latest Advanced Grant funding call. This EU funding, worth a total of €653 million, will benefit 269 well-established top researchers with a recent high-level research track-record . They were chosen from a total of 2,167 proposals, which corresponds to a success rate of 12%.


ERC Grant
We are excited to announce that eleven AcademiaNet members are among the recipients of this year’s round, receiving € 2.5 million each for their research project. The ERC informs that approximately 17% of proposals and some 17% of grants have been awarded to women, compared to 16% the year before.
Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, said: "The ERC's Advanced Grant […] provides a great example of how EU funding can help expand the frontiers of scientific knowledge, providing the resources necessary to continue ground-breaking, high-risk projects, and ensure Europe's global competitiveness." The grants are part of the EU's Research and Innovation programme, Horizon 2020.
Scientists from 27 nations were selected in this call, and they will carry out their projects at universities and research centres in 20 different countries across Europe. The awards go to life, physical and social scientists. The eleven AcademiaNet members among the grant recipients, as well as the focus of their projects, are:
• Greet Van den Berghe, medical scientist at the Catholic University of Leuven, researching the recovery from critical illness
• Ursula Keller, physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, researching short pulse laser sources
• Ruth Signorell, physical chemist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, researching photoelectron imaging
• Marlene Bartos, neuroscientist at the University of Freiburg, researching neuronal networks
• Marina Rodnina, physical biochemist at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, researching ribosome dynamics
• Margarita Díaz-Andreu García, archaeologist at the University of Barcelona, researching archaeoacoustics , the history of archaeology and heritage
• Benedetta Mennucci, physical chemist at the University of Pisa, researching multi-scale models to treat environment effects in quantum chemistry simulations
• Nynke Dekker, biophysicist at Delft University of Technology, researching nucleic acid replication from a biophysical perspective in viral, bacterial, and eukaryotic systems
• Sue Black, forensic scientist at the University of Dundee, researching biological and personal identity in human remains
• Darah O’Connor, biochemist at the John Innes Centre, researching biochemical pathways in plants
• Sharon Tooze, cell biologist at the Francis Crick Institute, researching the role of autophagy in human disease
AcademiaNet congratulates all grantees!