Today researchers at the CRG are amongst some of the world’s leading scientists in receiving funding from the European Research Council’s Advanced Grants Competition. The grant is dedicated long-term funding for ground-breaking, high-risk projects.
Luis Serrano, Director of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), will receive €2.9 million to engineer a lung bacterium to treat lung diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis or lung cancer.
Dr. Serrano’s lab aims to engineer the lung bacterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae and use it as a vector to stimulate or suppresses the immune system in lung cells to fight cancer, infection or other diseases. The ERC Advanced Grant will fund the use of engineered bacteria to express different combinations of active biomolecules in mice studies, paving the way for its application in human health.
According to Luis Serrano, “I am honoured to receive an ERC Advanced Grant, which is a recognition of the research excellence that occurs in Spain. It is quite exceptional to receive three advanced ERC grants in a row and it would not have been possible without working in a top international Spanish institute like the CRG. In the future I hope Spain matches Europe’s ambition in providing essential funding like this, which is how we build a better society, improve the economy and recover the money we contribute to the European Union.”
The 2020 ERC Advanced Grants round are worth €507 million in total. This year they will go to 209 leading researchers across Europe. Their work is set to provide new insights into many subjects, such as the links between obesity and pancreatic cancer, threats from wildlife viruses, brain-inspired neural network computer chips, and new ways for architects to design the buildings of the future.
Apart from strengthening Europe’s knowledge base, the new research projects will also lead to the creation of some 1 900 new jobs for post-doctoral fellows, PhD students and other research staff. The future grantees will carry out their projects at universities and research centres across 14 EU Member States and associated countries with the UK (51 grants), Germany (40), France (22) and Netherlands (17) hosting the highest number of grants. Spain received 11 grants in this round.
ERC competitions are open to researchers of any nationality and, in this round, scientists and scholars of 25 nationalities received funding. In this call, 2 678 applicants submitted their proposals in all fields of research. Female researchers submitted 22% of proposals and 23% of grants were awarded to women. Since the start of the Horizon Europe programme, the share of women among researchers awarded Advanced Grants has been steadily increasing from around 10% in 2014 to more than 22% in 2020.
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