The ERC is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. Their Starting Grants, part of the Horizon Europe programme, are designed to support exceptional researchers at the beginning of their careers to develop ambitious ideas, build their own teams and establish their independence at a pivotal stage in their careers. This year, the scheme attracted a record 4,807 proposals, with just 421 (8.8%) of these being funded.
Among the awarded scientists, one is from the Medical Science Division:
Dr Andrea Luppi (Department of Psychiatry). Despite decades of research, our understanding of brain function remains fragmented, making it difficult to connect discoveries across different disorders, treatments and especially different species. Dr Luppi will use the ERC Starting Grant to develop a new ‘functional coordinate system’ for the brain: a common language to describe the full complexity of how brain regions act and interact across cognition, disorders, drugs and brain stimulation. The project will combine brain imaging across species and development of advanced computer models, with the goal to unlock insights overlooked by traditional methods, and accelerate how fundamental discoveries in other species can translate to humans.
Congratulations to all the awardees!