Successful projects included an investigation into microplastics’ effects on the digestive system and an exploration of extrasolar atmospheres.
Seven Irish researchers were among the 494 awarded Starting Grants from the European Research Council (ERC) worth a total of €780m.
Starting Grants provided by ERC fund those with research experience between two and seven years after completing their PhDs the successful candidates were chosen from almost 3,500 applications.
Irish winners this year came from Trinity College Dublin (TCD), University College Dublin (UCD), University College Cork (UCC), Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and the University of Galway.
EU support for Starting Grants has risen since last year, with 400 successful awardees granted €628m in 2023. This year also brought more female representation, with 216 awardees – 44pc – identifying as women. This marks one of the highest shares since the programme’s inception in 2007.
The grants are part of the wider Horizon Europe programme that funds research across the region. Its current iteration, running between 2021-2027, has a budget of €93.5bn, with more than €16bn of this earmarked for ERC. The latest grants are estimated to create 3,160 jobs.
From sex-specific brain damage to extrasolar worlds
UCD and TCD have two successful awardees each. Dr Junli Xu from UCD was awarded €1.5m for her project ‘PlasTox’, which will investigate how microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs) affect human digestive health.
“By using advanced techniques such as machine learning and spectral imaging, we will develop new models that can predict the health impacts of MNPs, potentially transforming how we assess the risks they pose and reducing the need for costly lab experiments,” Xu explained.
Dr Junli Xu and Dr David MacManus. Image: UCD
Dr David MacManus, also from UCD, will receive €1.5m for his project ‘Brainsex’ that hopes to bridge the sex gap in traumatic brain injury (TBI) biomechanics. MacManus and his team will develop the first sex-specific computer models of the brain that incorporate sex-specific neuroanatomy and material damage properties of brain tissue, its blood vessels and cells.
“We currently lack female and geriatric-specific computer models,” he said. “This crucial support from the ERC will provide my lab with the necessary resources to embark on frontier research to understand the role sex-specific neuroanatomy plays in TBI biomechanics.”
TCD’s Dr Johanna Vos will be examining extrasolar atmospheres in her project ‘Exometeorology: Probing Extrasolar Atmospheres’. Vos was recently awarded three observing programmes as principal investigator with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). By combining new data from these programmes with state-of-the-art computational and data-driven techniques, her team will reveal the dominant atmospheric processes that give rise to weather on giant extrasolar worlds.
“This funding will allow me to build a team that will make use of groundbreaking data from JWST to provide key insights into the atmospheres of worlds beyond our solar system,” said Vos.
Another TCD researcher Dr Michael-John Dolan’s project ‘Microdissect: Dissection of Microglial State Biology in Brain Repair’ will focus on microglia, the brain’s resident immune cells and its changing states during brain damage, disease or repair. By using cutting-edge molecular and genomic tools, this project will create a detailed map of how these states change over time.
Other Irish winners include Sanathana Konugolu Venkata Sekar from UCC, Imran Sulaiman from RCSI and Catalina Vallejo Giraldo from University of Galway.
European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Iliana Ivanova, said: “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.”
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