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The latest cohort of ERC advanced grantees include researchers from UCD, Trinity and UCC.
Hundreds of researchers have been awarded grants by the European Research Council (ERC) to advance their work in a wide range of fields.
The ERC has awarded a total of €544m in advanced grants to 218 researchers and their teams across the EU and in the UK.
The advanced grant is a competitive EU scheme that helps researchers pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven projects that could lead to major scientific breakthroughs.
A total of 1,647 research applications were submitted to the latest funding round, with only a 13.2pc success rate. The research council said this round had the highest participation of women researchers to date.
The ERC said the grants are awarded to established, leading researchers with a proven track record of significant research achievements over the past decade.
Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said the grantees are “a testament to the outstanding quality of research carried out across Europe”.
“I am especially pleased to see such a high number of female researchers in this competition and that they are increasingly successful in securing funding,” Gabriel said. “We look forward to seeing the results of the new projects in the years to come, with many likely to lead to breakthroughs and new advances.”
Three researchers from Irish universities received ERC grant funding. These awardees are Kenneth Dawson from University College Dublin, Jane Ohlmeyer from Trinity College Dublin and Dagmar Schiek from University College Cork.
Dawson will investigate functional nanoscale therapeutics, Ohlmeyer will look at the voices of women in early modern Ireland and Schiek will investigate a theory on the role of law for integration within and beyond a fractured EU.
The ERC said the grants are expected to create more than 2,000 jobs for postdoctoral fellows, PhD students and other staff at the host institutions. German institutions scored the highest number of total grants with 37 awardees, followed by the UK at 35, France at 32 and Spain at 16.
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