11 ERC Grants Awarded to 5 Aurora members

1) Frédéric Saudou and his team study the molecular mechanisms that lead to neurodegeneration Huntington’s disease (HD). “We are still far away to understand the complexity of the mechanisms leading to neurodegeneration in HD,” says Frédéric Saudou. “We have found several years ago that an important function of HTT, the protein that when mutated causes HD plays a crucial role in boosting axonal transport of small vesicles that contain trophic factors. This transport, when altered has a deleterious effect on the brain. More recently, we have reported a new mechanism by which specific enzyme provide energy to axonal transport. We hypothesize in this project that HTT is key to regulate this energy supply and that defects in this mechanism could be participating in HD.”

This project will help to understand how HTT regulates axonal transport and how energy homeostasis plays a key role in HD and potentially to other neurodegenerative disorders linked intracellular trafficking defects.

2) Martin Blackledge, group leader of the Institut de Biologie Structurale (IBS – CEA/CNRS/UGA mixed research unit), receives the grant for his project on the atomic resolution description of highly dynamic molecular assemblies and their role in viral replication. His project entitled “Dynamic Assemblies” will receive € 2.5 million financial support from the ERC over 5 years.  The project will describe the structural and dynamic behaviour of highly disordered viral replication machines, including pre- and post-nucleocapsid assembly complexes, their interaction kinetics with host and viral partners, the effects of post-translational modifications, their assembly and functional mechanisms. The project will also identify the role of IDPs in functional liquid droplets that provide a highly efficient means to spatially and temporally control essential molecular processes.

3) Pieter van der Beek’s project Climatic Controls on Erosion Rates and  Relief of Mountain Belts received an ERC grant to be spread across 5 years. He is a tectonic geomorphologist interested in the tectonic and climatic controls on relief development and erosion rates, in particular in mountain belts. Van der Beek’s research focuses on both the mechanisms that create mountains and the processes of erosion that wear them away. Looking at these actions together allows for a complete model of mountain forms – their morphology – throughout their history. Advanced modelling techniques can reveal the past and the future of this morphology.

4) Renaud Demadrille‘s project focuses on Photochromic Solar Cells: Towards Photovoltaic Devices with Variable and Self-Adaptable Optical Transmission. Dr Madrille works at UGA but also at the INAC Institute for Nonoscience and Cryogenics which is part of theFrench Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission.

5) Giovanni Finazzi´s project focuses on Chloroplast and Mitochondria interactions for microalgal acclimation. Dr Finazzi works at UGA but also as CNRS Research Director and leader of the Light, Photosynthesis & Metabolism (LP&M) Team at CEA Grenoble.

1) Jan Theeuwes (cognitive psychology) has been awarded for his research project entitled ‘What to expect when you are not expecting it: How implicit regularities drive attentional selection’, focusing on implicit learning and how this process affects our perception and attention. For Jan Tueewes, this is the second ERC Advanced Grant – before he also received one in 2012 for research on the impact of (monetary) rewards on visual observation and attention processes.

2) Professor of Complex Trait Genetics at VU Amsterdam and Amsterdam UMC, location VUmc, and holder of a University Research Chair (URC) Danielle Posthuma already received a large Dutch personal research grant (VICI). She aims to develop innovative calculation methods and experimental set-ups that can bridge the gap between genetics and neurosciences, applied to brain-related properties. Posthuma will conduct this research at the Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research, at the Faculty of Science. She is looking forward to working with a multidisciplinary team of bioinformatics, statisticians and neurobiologists. Read more on the faculty site.

3) Sergey Nejentsev’s research group at Amsterdam UMC receives 2,160,926 euros for their search for new treatments for tuberculosis. This amount will be divided over five years. “New treatment options are desperately needed to win the war against this bacterium,” says Professor Nejentsev of the Department of Molecular Cell Biology and immunology.

Pregnancy complications such as preeclampsia and preterm birth are known to affect infant health, but their influence on mothers’ long-term health is not well understood. Most previous studies are seriously limited by their reliance on information from the first pregnancy. Often they lack the data to study women’s complete reproductive histories. Without a complete reproductive history, the relationship between pregnancy complications and women’s long-term health cannot be reliably studied.

Professor Rolv Skjaerven has worked in this field of research for many years; he sees many erroneous conclusions in studies based on insufficient data. For instance, both after preeclampsia and after a stillbirth, the high risk of heart disease observed in one-child mothers is strongly attenuated in women with subsequent pregnancies. After receiving the grant, he aims to study different patterns of pregnancy complications that occur alone or in combination across pregnancies and analyse their associations with cause-specific maternal mortality. Using this unique methodology, he will challenge the idea that placental dysfunction is the origin of preeclampsia and test the hypothesis that pregnancy complications may cause direct long-term effects on maternal health. The findings of this research have the potential to advance our understanding of how pregnancy complications affect long-term maternal health and help to develop more effective chronic disease prevention strategies.

Johan Åkerman, professor of applied spintronics at the University of Gothenburg, receives the grant for research on neuromorphic calculations.
In the current ERC project TOPSPIN, researchers will develop so-called spin-Hall oscillators to make neuromorphic calculations and ultra-fast pattern recognition. He feels honoured and grateful for having the opportunity to research a project that can lead to breakthroughs in the new area of neuromorphic calculations. He hopes to make pattern recognition and similar calculations related to cognitive functions and artificial intelligence. The researchers’ goal is to show that there are completely different and much faster and more energy-efficient methods for making such calculations than today’s computers can handle. The researcher recon that this particular goal might be extremely high. But continues by saying that they hope their project will lead to a technology shift from digital calculations to calculations based on oscillator networks. Where today’s circuits have hit the speed ceiling at about 4 GHz, they will show calculations at frequencies above 100 GHz.

Dr Marc Levine receives ERC Advanced grant of 2.1 million euros to realize his project over the next five years. It is called QUADAG – Quadratic refinements in algebraic geometry. Levine’s basic project belongs to the so-called counting geometry. This subfield has been a research focus in algebraic geometry for about 30 years, also because it is closely linked to mathematical physics.
“Simply put, Counting geometry counts how many solutions there are to certain given geometric problems. In my QUADAG project, I will use the quadratic forms to explain familiar aspects of this exciting field and to discover new ones, “explains Professor Levine. “Much of the counting geometry is still unknown. I hope, therefore, that my results will shed some light on and contribute to the solution of questions related to real numbers, rational numbers or finite fields. “