The European Research Council (ERC) has selected 478 researchers for this year's Starting Grants. Among them, 10 are from universities in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation and three are FNRS researchers.

With a total budget of €761 million, these Starting Grants aim to support cutting-edge research in a wide range of fields, from life sciences and physics to social sciences and humanities. They will help early-career researchers launch their own projects, build their teams and pursue their most promising ideas. With more than €16 million awarded to French-speaking Belgian researchers, this is the best ERC result in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation.

Congratulations in particular to:

• Chloé MARTENS, FNRS Research associate at ULB
  Funded project: Modulating Drug Transporters Dynamics to Improve Therapeutic Efficacy
• Laurine CHOISEZ, FNRS Postdoctoral researcher at UCLouvain
  Funded project: Fe Fuel Particle Design for Renewable Energy Storage
• Mateo LEGANES FONTENEAU, FNRS Postdoctoral researcher at UCLouvain
  Funded project: Craving in the Body

Patrick Meyfroidt is FNRS Senior Research Associate at UCLouvain. He is one of 281 researchers to be awarded an ERC Advanced Grant following the latest call for proposals launched by the European Research Council (ERC). Well done to him! 

His project is entitled: “Land use, Sustainability, and Democratic Backsliding”. 

Gaëtan Kerschen, Professor at ULiège, is the second winner from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. He has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for his project entitled: ‘Experimental Continuation in Nonlinear Dynamics: Aerospace Engineering and Beyond’.

The funding, worth in total €721 million, will go to 281 leading researchers across Europe. The Advanced Grant competition gives senior researchers the opportunity to pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven projects that could lead to major scientific breakthroughs. The new grants are part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme. 

See the ERC press release.

Christophe Charlier, FNRS Research Associate at UCLouvain, started his project entitled “Asymptotic analysis of repulsive point processes and integrable equations”, funded under the ERC Starting Grant 2023 call.

The ERC enables researchers to develop exploratory research projects at the frontiers of knowledge, in all fields of science and technology. The only selection criterion is the scientific excellence of the project and the candidate.

The ERC Starting Grants are designed to support excellent Principal Investigators at the career stage at which they are starting their own independent research team or programme. Principal Investigators must demonstrate the ground-breaking nature, ambition, and feasibility of their research proposal.

© Danny Gys/FNRS

The European Research Council (ERC) has announced the award of a further 134 Proof of Concept grants, bringing the total number of researchers who have benefited from this type of funding over the past year to 245. Each grant is worth €150,000 and helps ERC recipients bridge the gap between their pioneering research results and the early stages of commercialisation. As part of this competition, a total of €36.75 million has been allocated to funding innovation. The grants programme is part of the EU's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.

One FNRS researcher is among the 134 beneficiaries: Esteban Gurzov, Senior Research Fellow at ULB.

Project name: REPRO-PTP - Reversing metabolic reprogramming in obesity-associated hepatocellular carcinoma by inhibiting receptor protein tyrosine phosphatases

Project details:
The global obesity epidemic is leading to an alarming increase in metabolic diseases, including diabetes, liver dysfunction and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Worryingly, obesity accounts for 40% of the increase in HCC cases in developed countries. HCC, the most common primary liver cancer, is now a major public health problem, with a five-year survival rate of just 15% and annual healthcare costs in excess of €4 billion in Europe. To address this urgent medical need, the REPRO-PTP project, supported by the ERC Proof-of-Concept programme, proposes a revolutionary targeted therapy to combat obesity-associated HCC, with the aim of halting the progression of the cancer and reducing the risk of relapse.

The ERC press release

The ULB press release

Out of 3,474 applicants, the ERC has selected 494 researchers for this year's Starting Grants. Of these, 22 are from Belgian universities, 4 from universities in the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles and 2 are permanent researchers at the FNRS.

The Starting Grant, worth a total of almost €780 million, supports cutting-edge research in a wide range of fields, from life sciences and physics to social sciences and the humanities. It will help early-career researchers launch their own projects, build their teams and pursue their most promising ideas.

Congratulations to

🔹 Arnaud Vanden Broeck, Research Associate FNRS (newly appointed) and Promoter of an FNRS Mandat d'impulsion scientifique-Ulysse at the ULiège Protein Engineering Centre (CIP).
➡ Funded project : TranSplice - A molecular basis of kinetoplastids SL trans-splicing.

🔹 Liselot Dewachter, Research Associate FNRS at the Institut de Duve, UCLouvain
➡ Funded project: REalCYCLE - Reassessing Bacterial Cell Cycle Regulation: Revealing Novel Regulatory Principles in Realistic Environments

The ERC press release