Seven researchers from the University of Cambridge have been awarded Synergy Grants by the European Research Council (ERC) to lead five collaborative scientific projects. These grants aim to support research efforts that require expertise and resources beyond what a single group can provide.
The ERC Synergy Grants are part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme, which funds ambitious research across various disciplines. In this round, the ERC has distributed €684 million among sixty-six research teams, involving 239 scientists from universities and research centers in 26 countries. The average grant for each project is about €10.3 million, with only around one in ten proposals selected for funding. Of the recipients, 24 grantees are based in the United Kingdom.
The five projects led by Cambridge researchers span diverse fields:
- Professor Jeremy Baumberg (Department of Physics) will collaborate with colleagues from Heidelberg and Munich on "DNA for Reconfigurable Nano-Opto-Mechanical Systems" (DNA4RENOMS). This project aims to use DNA structures combined with light-responsive polymers to create nanomachines for applications such as sensors and energy-efficient computing.
- Professors Ewa Paluch (Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience) and Daniel St Johnston (Gurdon Institute and Department of Genetics) will work with the Max Planck Institute on "Robustness and plasticity of epithelial architectures" (EpiRaP), focusing on how cells develop and maintain their shapes, particularly within protective tissue layers.
- Professor Enrico Crema (Department of Archaeology) leads "Investigating alternative trajectories for human demographic growth in temperate northern Holocene societies" (FORAGER), alongside partners from York, Montana, Lund, and others. The team will study why some prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies experienced population growth similar to early farming communities by comparing archaeological evidence from regions including Japan, North America’s Pacific Northwest Coast, Atlantic Northeast Coast, and Europe’s Baltic region.
- Professor Richard Durbin and Dr Felipe Karam Teixeira (Department of Genetics) are working with Vienna’s Gregor Mendel Institute on "GENomes Evolve in a Landscape of TEs" (GENELT). Their focus is on transposable elements—DNA sequences that move within genomes—and their role in genome evolution.
- Professor Sadaf Farooqi (Institute of Metabolic Science) collaborates with teams at the University of Florida and University College London on "The biology of innate behaviour" (INSTINCT), a project exploring basic behavioral biology with potential relevance to conditions like obesity and anxiety.
Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation said: “Europe’s frontier research has never been so international. This global collaboration strengthens European science, gives our researchers access to world-class expertise and infrastructure, and brings leading scientists from around the world closer to Europe.”
Professor Maria Leptin, President of the European Research Council added: “Collaboration is at the heart of the ERC Synergy Grants. In our latest round, teams of researchers will join forces to address the most complex scientific problems together - this time, they are more international than ever. The competition was fierce, with many outstanding proposals left unfunded. With more funds, the ERC could fully capitalise on this wealth of first-class science. Such scientific endeavours are what Europe needs to be at the real forefront.”