Over 100 ERC awards for UCL researchers

UCL, along with Oxford, has been awarded nine consolidator grants, the highest number awarded to any UK university.

Over 100 awards have been made between 2008-2013. UCL was awarded 16 Early Stage grants in 2013, which aim to support promising researchers to become research leaders.

Professor Michaelides was awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2008, making him the first ERC grant holder at UCL. He has recently been awarded a Consolidator Grant worth €1.9m for his work on the HeteroIce project at the London Centre for Nanotechnology.

Professor Michaelides said: "Getting an ERC grant is like winning the lottery. Obviously I'm delighted to win it for a second time! The sustained long-term funding ERC grants provide are enabling me and my research group to tackle some of the most fundamental and challenging problems in the chemical sciences"

Michael Browne, Head of the European Research and Innovation Office at UCL, said: "We're delighted by the recent awards, which will support a vast range of exciting work taking place across UCL. ERC funding enables our researchers to develop their projects and their careers at UCL and provides an opportunity for researchers to explore subjects in their full complexity."

Professor David Price, UCL Vice Provost (Research), said: "This level of sustained funding from the ERC is testament to the world-leading research taking place at UCL, and we are proud of the insight and knowledge being generated across the university. I would like to congratulate the researchers on their success, and wish them all the best in their continued research."

The successful applicants are:

Starting grants

Dr Niloy Mitra (UCL Computer Science) for "Structure-Aware Geometry Processing"

Professor Tiziana Rossetto for (UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering) "UrbanWaves: Evaluating structure vulnerability to tsunami and earthquakes"

Dr Aureo de Paula (UCL Economics) for "Econometric Analysis of Interaction Models"

Dr Paul Gissen (UCL Institute of Child Health) for "Cultured Liver Organoids on 3-D Scaffolds as Novel Approach to the Investigation and Treatment of Inherited Cholestatic Diseases"

Dr Tracy Kivell (UCL Anthropology) for "The evolution of the human hand: grasping trees and tools"

Dr Vitor Pinheiro (UCL Structural & Molecular Biology) for "Directed evolution of a synthetic episome based on hexitol nucleic acids (HNA)"

Dr Mirko Trajkovski (UCL Structural & Molecular Biology) for "Role of miRNAs in brown and white adipose tissue differentiation and function"

Consolidator grants

Professor Angelos Michaelides (UCL London Centre for Nanotechnology) for "Towards a molecular level understanding of heterogeneous ice nucleation"

Dr Giovanna Tinetti (UCL Physics and Astronomy) for "Decoding Lights from Exotic Worlds"

Dr Jernej Ule (UCL Neuroscience) for" Specificity of translational control during unfolded protein response"

Professor Maria Cristina De Nardi (UCL Economics) for "Savings and Risk Over the Lifecycle: Theory and Evidence"

Dr Martin Holbraad (UCL Anthropology) for "Making Selves, Making Revolutions: Comparative Anthropologies of Revolutionary Politics"

Dr Nikolaus Weiskopf (UCL Neurology) for "Non-Invasive In-Vivo Histology in Health and Disease Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)"

Dr Paolo Salomoni (UCL Cancer Institute) for "The histone H3.3 variant in brain cancer pathogenesis"

Dr Rebecca Empson (UCL Anthropology) for " Emerging Subjects of the New Economy: Tracing Economic Growth in Mongolia"

Professor Charles Swanton (UCL Cancer Institute) for "Tumour Heterogeneity and Somatic Evolution of Unstable cancer genomes"

Links

• UCL European Research and Innovation Office
• London Centre for Nanotechnology
• European Research Council Starting Grants