ERC Grants
The European Research Council ERC supports world-class research. The grants are awarded to excellent researchers at different career levels to help build a team around an original and groundbreaking research idea.
ERC awards grants for three career levels: Starting Grant, Consolidator Grant and Advanced Grant. Moreover, there is Synergy Grant, which had been awarded twice in 2011 and 2012, and Proof of Concept, which can be applied for by ERC grant recipients with the aim to commercialise results of the ERC grant. ERC was founded in 2007 and SCIENCE has received 35 grants in total as PI (which means that a SCIENCE-researcher has gotten the grant and is responsible for the project) including a project transferred to SCIENCE after obtained grant. The list below shows ongoing projects.
ERC Starting Grant
ERC Starting Grant is for young talented researchers with 2-7 years of experience. As a starting point 1,5 mill EUR will be awarded over the course of 5 years. From 2007 – 2012 the ERC Starting Grant also comprised of the group, which from 2013 was separated to become ERC Consolidator Grant.
Title: Explainable and Robust Automatic Fact Checking
Department: Department of Computer Science
Grant period: 2023-2028
Title: Paracrine signalling in alpha cells and the integration of mechanisms that control glucagon secretion
Department: Department of Biology
Grant period: 2023-2028
Title: Photonic Quantum Technologies with Strain-Free Artificial Atoms
Department: The Niels Bohr Institute
Grant period: 2023-2028
Title: Novel Approaches to Error Detection and Protection with Superconducting Qubits
Department: The Niels Bohr Institute
Grant period: 2023-2028
Title: Quantum Information Processing with Interacting Parties
Department: Department of Mathematical Sciences
Grant period: 2023-2027
Title: Dynamical Formation of Black Hole Mergers
Department: Niels Bohr Institute
Grant period: 2022-2027
This ERC research program will lead to new ideas and tools to probe in unprecedented ways the origin of binary black hole (BBH) mergers, with particular focus on constraining the dynamical formation of GW sources.
Title: Physical basis of Collective Mechano-Transduction: Bridging cell decision-making to multicellular selforganisation
Department: Niels Bohr Institute
Grant period: 2022-2027
With his ERC Starting Grant, Amin Doostmohammadi will combine physical modelling with biological experiments, examine the role of mechanical forces in the proliferation of cell groups and seek to formulate an integrated view on cellular decision-making that incorporates mechanics as an integral part of the process.
Title: AMPLITUDES: Manifesting the Simplicity of Scattering Amplitudes
Department: Niels Bohr Institute
Grant period: 2018-2023
Scattering amplitudes encode the predicted, relative probabilities of the possible outcomes for any experiment. They represent the bread-and-butter predictions for any quantum theory, and are extremely important for experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider and the discovery of the Higgs boson.
Title: Genetic admixture and its impact on domestication in the Bos genus
Department: Department of Biology
Grant year: 2020-2025
This project will study genome data to figure out what kind of relevance it may have to both tame and wild ox species.
Title: CASe: Combinatorics with an analytic structure
Department: Department of Mathematical Sciences
Title: ELEVATE
Department: Department of Biology
Grant period: 2018-2023
ELEVATE focuses on the remarkable lineage of leafcutter ants (genus Atta) that harvest fresh vegetation and use it as compost to produce domesticated fungal crops in huge underground nests that feed massive superorganismal colonies with millions of workers.
READ MORE: Post Doc Jonathan Shik received a ERC Starting Grant
Title: ‘FlyGutHomeostasis’ – Identification of paracrine and systemic signals controlling adult stem cell activity and organ homeostasis
Department: Department of Biology
This project examines paracrine and systemic signals controlling the stem cell activity in flies.
Title: Reinterpreting how forests support people's dietary quality in low-income countries (FORESTDIET)
Department: Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management
Grant year: 2019-2024
The project seeks to investigate how the loss of forests affects the local community's food safety and living conditions.
Title: Nano-mechanical quantum photonic circuits (NANOMEQ)
Department: Niels Bohr Institute
Grant period: 2020-2025
This project is focused on exploring new phenomena and realizing the next generation of programmable quantum devices for computing and secure communication.
READ MORE: Young researcher talents get prestigeous career push
Title: HEMs DAM
Department: Niels Bohr Institute
Grant period: 2017-2022
The Centerpiece in the ERC-project HEMs DAM is to create new types of hybrid materials that meet a long list of strict requirements so that they can carry these so-called topologically protected quantum states.
Title: Quantifying and upscaling nitrogen fixation in pristine ecosystems: Uncovering the climatic, ecological, and molecular control mechanisms (SYMBIONIX)
Department: Department of Biology
Grant year: 2020-2025
This project is concerned with the identification of the climate and ecological factors that determines the size of the nitrogen fixation in moss.
Title: ‘MATMECH’ – Live tapings of Material Formation: Unravelling formation mechanisms in materials chemistry through multimodal X-ray total scattering studies
Department: Department of Chemistry
Grant year: 2018-2023
The research group studies material research and seeks to gain a new understanding of the atomic structure in nanomaterials. This research can lead to chemists being able to design new materials with the specific characteristics used in i.e. energy materials for batteries.
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Title: 'PUNCTUATION' - Pervasive Upstream Non-Coding Transcription Underpinning Adaptation
Department: Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences
Grants period: 2018-2023
The aim of the project is to better understand what makes an organism different from the others, since many differences observed in the DNA of the organisms, are found in the non-coding sequences.
READ MORE: ERC Starting Grant for mapping genetic punctuation
Title: Trees outside forests in global drylands (TOFDRY)
Department: Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management
Grant year: 2020-2025
This project is about the mapping of tree and bush vegetation that will shed light on the interplay between humans, climate and trees in the dry areas on the planet.
READ MORE: Young researcher talents get prestigeous career push
Title: DisDyn, Distributed and Dynamic Graph Algorithms and Complexity
Department: Department of Computer Science
Grant period: 2017-2022
Title: ‘SELECTIONDRIVEN’ – Gaining insights into human evolution and disease prevention from adaptive natural selection driven by lethal epidemics
Department: Department of Biology
Grant year: 2018-2023
This project focuses on the analysis of DNA by means of statistical methods and computer programmes. The analyses may have several purposes. One analysis may show the genetic reasons for type 2 diabetes, while another analysis may teach us about how the world has become populated.
ERC Consolidator Grant
ERC Consolidator Grant is aimed at researchers with 7-12 years of experience. As a starting point, maximum 2 mill. EUR will be awarded over the course of five years. ERC Consolidator Grant has existed as an independent grant since 2013. Earlier it was a part of ERC Starting Grant.
Title: Neutrino Quantum Kinetics
Department: Niels Bohr Institutet
Grant period: 2023-2028
READ MORE: Irene Tamborra receives grant to investigate the unknowns of neutron star mergers
Title: BioMatrix, The biofilm matrix and its functional role in the ecology of bacterial communities
Department: Department of Biology
Grant period: 2021-2026
Title: Phononic Quantum Sensors
Department: Niels Bohr Institute
Grant period: 2021-2026
Albert Schliesser’s research group has been known for pioneering studies on measuring and controlling motion with high precision, and the group has invented thin membranes with a special “phononic” pattern of perforations, whose vibrations can be controlled particularly precisely.This project aims to explore the development of such devices into a sensor platform capable of detecting forces with unprecedented precision. Potential impact covers both basic quantum research and applications in technology, and range from fundamental tests of quantum mechanics to novel approaches to nanoscale microscopy.
READ MORE: ERC grant to develop phononic quantum sensors at the Niels Bohr Institute
Title: Resource-Q: Efficient Conversion of Quantum Information Resources
Department: Department of Mathematical Sciences
Grant year: 2019-2024
The project seeks to understand how quantum mechanisms affects information processes by working with the implementation of quantum communication and quantum calculations among other things.
This is the second time, Matthias Christandl receives an ERC-grant.
Christandl received his first ERC-grant in 2013.
READ MORE: Prestigious research grant for quantum mathematician
Title: QLIMIT: Challenging The Limits of Molecular Quantum Interference Effects
Department: Department of Chemistry
Grant period: 2019-2024
Title: Reprogramming of small RNA function in plant-pathogen interactions
Department: Department of Biology
Grant period: 2017-2022
The project focuses on understanding three central aspects of RISC reprogramming in plant-pathogen interactions.
It is Peter Brodersen’s second ERC grant. Brodersen received the ERC Starting Grant in 2011.
Title: Moduli Spaces, Manifolds and Arithmetic (MSMA)
Department: Department of Mathematical Sciences
Grant period: 2016-2021
This project centers around the area of algebraic topology with a special focus on the border between algebraic topology, arithmetic geometry and numeral theory. It is very novel within the field of mathematics to look at the mutual impacts between these three research fields that have traditionally been kept separate. The interaction between these three research fields is turning into a new ‘hot’ research area within international mathematics.
Title: Loops and groups: Geodesics, moduli spaces, and infinite discrete groups via string topology and homological stability
Department: Department of Mathematical Sciences
Grant period: 2018-2023
Loops and Groups is at the intersection of algebra, topology and geometry, with the scientific goal of answering central questions about "homological stability, geodesics on manifolds, and the moduli space of Riemann surfaces. Loop spaces can be used to study geodesics on manifolds, and the project proposes new methods for studying the connection between these two mathematical objects.
Title: DEFEAT: DiseasE-FreE social life without Antibiotics resistance
Department: Department of Biology
Grant period: 2018-2023
Michael Thomas-Poulsen’s research explores how ancient symbiotic associations between insects, fungi they farm for food, and complex bacterial communities evolve and are optimised over evolutionary time for efficient and sustainable plant decomposition and defence against disease.
Title: TUVOLU: Tundra biogenic volatile emissions in the 21st century
Department: Department of Biology
Grant period: 2018-2023
Riikka’s group works with the exchange of climate-relevant reactive gases between natural ecosystems and the atmosphere. The research group’s recent work has focused on arctic tundra vegetation, which is experiencing climatic warming about twice as strong as the rest of the globe, and which seems to drastically increase VOC release to the atmosphere with climate warming.
ERC Advanced Grant
ERC Advanced Grant is targeted top researchers. The grants amount to up to 2,5 mill. EUR over the course of five years
Title: Quantum mechanics in the negative mass reference frame (Quantum-N)
Department: Niels Bohr Institute
Grants period: 2018-2023
The central part of the project deals with creating entangled states of a mechanical motion sensor and an atomic cloud. Entanglement means that the quantum properties of two objects, such as the mechanical sensor and the atomic cloud, are very strongly connected. One of the most ambitious goals of the project is to improve the sensitivity of the best motion detectors, namely the gravitation wave interferometers, which recently reported the first observation of gravitational waves (Nobel Prize in Physics, 2017).
This is the second time Eugene Polzik receives and ERC grant. He got his first one in 2012.
READ MORE: Eugene Polzik receives ERC Advanced Grant for the second time, this time for 16.2 million DKK
Title: Self-organization in Competition and diversity
Department: Niels Bohr Institute
Grants period: 2017-2022
The project’s aim is to position living systems within the realms of theoretical physics, with conceptual gains for both fields. Research in complex systems is enriched by a new dynamics of diversity and with biology gaining quantitative descriptions of central model organisms.
READ MORE: Large ERC grant for Kim Sneppen
Title: Local State
Department: Department of Food and Resource Economics
Grant period: 2016-2021
The purpose of this project is to investigate the political power dynamics of local institutions in weak states – how do they exercise political authority and manage access to resources, including right of ownership of natural resources, and acknowledge these rights? The aim is to redefine the existing research on so-called weak states by investigating what kind of political authority that is actually being exercised, rather than measure how these states do not meet theoretical ideals.
READ MORE: Prestigeous ERC grant to IFRO
ERC Synergy Grant
ERC Synergy Grant has so far only been awarded twice and very few grants. It is awarded to a collaboration of 2-4 researchers at same level as the other ERC grants.
Title: GREEN2ICE
Department: Niels Bohr Institute
Grants period: 2020-2025
The project GREENICE has received 103 million DKK from ERC synergy, of which 63 million goes to the University of Copenhagen. Through analyses of ice cores, researchers will be able to find answers and learn more about the climate change of the future, by looking back in the past.
According to Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, this is not only a case of exotic basic research, but this will result in essential knowledge about how resilient the ice cap is to climate change.
Title: HEAVYMETAL
Department: Niels Bohr Institute
HEAVY METAL has gathered four research groups in an international team of the world's leading experts within their respective fields. In addition to Darach Watson, who is the group leader in Copenhagen, Andreas Bauswein is head of the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Germany, Padraig Dunne management team from University College Dublin in Ireland and the Stuart Sim group from Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Title: Foundations of nonlocal and nonabelian condensed-matter systems
Department: Niels Bohr Institute
Grants period: 2020-2025
This project is about figuring out if the Majorana particle can be useful in quantum computers taking over the heavy calculation tasks by disrupting the fixed limitations of normal computers. The Majorana particle may be a determining factor, as it is believed, that it can remember information better than regular transistors.
READ MORE: Quantum researchers will scrutinize the special qualities of the Majorana particle