Six Max Planck researchers land lucrative EU funding

ERC awards Advanced Grants worth up to 2.5 million euros each.

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded a total of 269 Advanced Grants to senior researchers well known in their field. The funding of up to €2.5 million per grant will enable exceptional researchers and their teams to realise their creative project ideas. Six researchers from Max Planck Institutes are amongst the grant recipients. The funding of up to €2.5 million per grant will enable exceptional researchers and their teams to realise their creative project ideas. Six researchers from Max Planck Institutes are amongst the grant recipients.

In the most recent round for Advanced Grants, a total of 2,167 research proposals were submitted to the ERC out of which merely 12% were selected for funding. The sole selection criterion is scientific excellence.

This ERC funding is worth a total of €653 million. The grants are part of the EU's innovation fund, Horizon 2020. The selected research projects covered a wide range of research areas: How does air pollution affect the development of baby's brains? Can innovative heart regeneration treatments increase the long-term survival of heart attack victims? How did non-living matter evolve into living systems that established themselves on Earth? Why are bacteria extremely aggressive towards one another?

Funding is provided in the three areas of life sciences, chemistry, physics and technology, as well as social sciences and the humanities.

Six Max Planck researchers were amongst the grant recipients, including two women scientists. Germany-wide, the Max Planck Society ranks first among hosting institutions, before TU Munich (4 grants), the Helmholtz Association, and LMU Munich (3 grants each). The following Max Planck researchers garnered the coveted awards:  

Life sciences

  • Reinhard Jahn, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, project: Mechanisms of neurotransmitter uptake and storage by synaptic vesicles
  • Marina Rodnina, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, project: Ribosome Processivity and Cotranslational Protein Folding
  • Brenda Schulman, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, project: How does the ubiquitin-like protein NEDD8 activate ubiquitin ligase machineries?

Chemistry, Physics, and Technology

  • Gerhard Dehm, Max Planck Institute  für Eisenforschung GmbH, project: Correlating the State and Properties of Grain Boundaries
  • Peer Fischer, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, project: Holographic acoustic assembly and manipulation
  • Krishna Gummadi, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, project: Foundations for Fair Social Computing

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