Today, the European Research Council (ERC) - the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research - has announced the awarding of 494 major European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants to young scientists and scholars across Europe, including six Oxford University researchers. The funding - totalling nearly €780 million this year– is part of the Horizon Europe programme and will support researchers at the beginning of their careers to launch their own projects, form their teams, and pursue their most promising ideas.
The application process for ERC Starting Grants is highly competitive: this year, around 14% of applications were successful, with 494 researchers selected out of 3,474 proposals.
Iliana Ivanova, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said: ‘The European Commission is proud to support the curiosity and passion of our early-career talent under our Horizon Europe programme. The new ERC Starting Grants winners aim to deepen our understanding of the world. Their creativity is vital to finding solutions to some of the most pressing societal challenges.’
Dr Ligneul’s research focuses on methods to non-invasively image the microstructural properties of the brain. The ERC Starting Grant will fund a new project – called CellPrism – to track how the shape and quantity of different cell types in the brain changes during healthy development or disease. This will couple MRI scans with an advanced magnetic resonance spectroscopy method, called “diffusion-weighted MRS” (dMRS), which can detect the displacement of certain intracellular brain metabolites. These have distinct concentrations in different cell types, making dMRS highly sensitive to specific cell morphologies.
Getting this ERC Starting Grant brings a lot of peace of mind: five years to focus on my research and the exciting opportunity to build a team, from bud to blossom. I am grateful to the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences and the WIN Physics and Preclinical Imaging Groups, for creating a healthy and supportive work environment, where I could meet amazing collaborators and friends.
Read about all Oxford University’s 2024 ERC Starting Grant winners.