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Four Irish boffins get E6m for research

Monday, September 10 12:47:59

The European Research Council (ERC) today announced the names of four Irish researchers who will each receive a grant of up to E2 million to develop ideas at the frontiers of knowledge and build their own research teams.

Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science Maire Geoghegan-Quinn said: "In a global knowledge economy we need new ideas to compete. So investing in world-class frontier research and in the next generation of scientists is one of Europe's top priorities. After just five years ERC grants are world-renowned, and help us retain and attract the best of the best."

In its biggest grant award ever, the ERC will support a total of 536 early-career top researchers from across 21 European countries. The funding amounts to almost E800 million and is awarded to researchers of 41 different nationalities across Europe.

The grants will enable the most promising scientists to develop ideas at the frontiers of knowledge and build their own research teams with more than 3,000 postdocs and PhD students, thereby supporting a new generation of top scientists in Europe. The ERC Projects selected cover a wide range of topics, from the social impacts of trans-Mediterranean renewable energy cooperation, to laser-based hearing aids and optical remote sensing technology for civil engineering works.

The Irish researchers named today are: Debra F. Laefer, UCD Project title: " RETURN - Rethinking Tunnelling in Urban Neighbourhoods"; Aoife McLysaght, TCD Project title: "Dosage sensitive genes in evolution and disease"; Stefano Sanvito, TCD Project title: "Quantitative electron and spin transport theory for organic crystals based devices" and Emma Teeling, UCD Project title: "Comparative genomics/'wildlife' transcriptomics uncovers the mechanisms of halted ageing in mammals".