Two promising young TU/e researchers, Sara Giarrusso and Julius Huijts, have each been awarded a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The prestigious grant will enable them to launch their research projects, aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the behavior of electrons and proteins, respectively.
The European Research Council (ERC) is one of the European Union's main funding bodies for scientific research. The grants awarded to Giarrusso and Huijts are part of a €705 million funding package that will support 421 early-career researchers across Europe in this funding round.
The grants help talented researchers pursue ambitious ideas, build their own research teams, and establish their independence at a crucial stage of their careers. Researchers who applied from outside the EU or countries associated with the Horizon Europe programme will now relocate to Europe to continue their research.
Understanding the movement of electrons
Sara Giarrusso , professor in Mathematics and Computer Science, studies Computational Quantum & Molecular Dynamics . Her new ERC project 'CURRENt' focuses on the movement of electrons.
Giarrusso: "Understanding how electrons move in real time is essential for the development of new technologies, from more efficient solar cells and advanced quantum devices to a better understanding of how radiation causes damage to DNA."
"Scientists currently rely primarily on time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT) to simulate these ultrafast processes. While the method performs well in many situations, it falls short when electrons influence one another over larger distances and longer timescales, relative to the typical scales of electronic motion."
"With CURRENt, I aim to develop a radical new approach. Instead of continuing to adapt existing models, the project builds a new mathematical framework based on the so-called Exact Electron Factorization. This framework enables a more accurate description of these complex interactions and introduces a novel quantity known as the intrinsic vector potential."
"My goal is to provide researchers with a more powerful and reliable tool for predicting electron behavior. This could help drive breakthroughs in the development of new materials for energy storage, light harvesting and quantum technologies, while also deepening our understanding of chemical reactivity at its most fundamental level."
Viewing the power of proteins
The project 'Cool T-ReX' was thought up by Julius Huijts . He is a professor in Applied Physics and Science Education on the topic of Coherence and Quantum Technology .
Huijts: "Anything that your body does - whether it's breathing, fighting a virus, or capturing photons with your eyes as you read this article - at a molecular level is taken care of by proteins."
"Understanding how these proteins work is crucial for the improvement of medicine and to unravel processes that are fundamental to life (like photosynthesis or DNA replication). But these little 'molecular machines' are very tiny and move incredibly fast, so the information we can get by looking at them using traditional instrumentation is limited."
"In Cool T-ReX we will develop a new instrument, a kind of high-speed electron microscope, with which we will film the conformational changes of proteins. We will do this with nanosecond pulses of electrons, which we create through photoionization of laser-cooled atoms."
"These electron pulses then take snapshots of the motion of the proteins, through a technique called time-resolved protein crystallography. The result will be a 'molecular movie' of the protein, the first ever to be recorded using electrons, from a table-top setup."
About the current ERC Starting Grants
A record of 4,807 proposals were submitted to this competition, up 22 percent from 3,928 last year's call. Of these, only 8.8 percent could be funded. The increased demand was also reflected in the number of applications from researchers based outside Europe. In particular, 169 US-based researchers applied for this funding, compared to 116 in the previous call.
The new grantees will be based at universities and research centers in 25 EU Member States and associated countries, notably in Germany (89 grants), the UK (47), France (38), Switzerland (36), and the Netherlands (33). Among the winners are 84 Germans, 50 Italians, 30 French, and 24 Spanish, as well as researchers of 48 other nationalities. Estimates indicate that the grants are likely to create more than 2,700 jobs within the new grantees' teams.
In this round of ERC Starting Grants, 21 researchers currently based outside Europe received funding, including 20 from the United States. This represents 5 percent of all grants awarded. Last year, 11 researchers based outside Europe won Starting Grants, accounting for 2.3 percent of all successful applications.
A Starting Grant provides up to €1.5 million over a maximum period of five years. Researchers may also apply for additional funding to cover eligible costs, such as acquiring major research equipment, accessing large-scale research facilities, or carrying out costly experimental work or fieldwork.
As part of the Choose Europe initiative to attract and retain scientific talent, the ERC has made additional funding available. Applicants moving to Europe can request up to €2 million to support the creation of new laboratories or research teams in Europe.
