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European Research Council to support five more Portuguese projects

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    ERC Portugal Funding Horizon Europe Research

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Research projects on eating behaviors, Parkinson's disease, nanoparticles, social networks, and recycling have secured an additional €2.1 million from the European Research Council (ERC) for Portugal. In total, the ERC will support five more projects developed by researchers from the Champalimaud Foundation, UCIBIO – NOVA FCT, ITQB/NOVA, Institute of Social Sciences/ULisboa, and CICECO/University of Aveiro.

With these results, research carried out at institutions belonging to the National Science and Technology System (SNCT) has reached the milestone of €85 million and 56 projects coordinated in Calls since the start of Horizon Europe (2021), the European framework program for research and innovation funding for the period 2021-2027.

Today, January 18, 2024, the three projects led by Portugal selected in Call Proof of Concept 2023 Call were announced, which aims to fund the commercial and societal exploitation of projects previously funded by the ERC. Recently, another nationally led project, which was on the reserve list, was approved. The funding for these projects is €150,000 each.

The new winners of the 2023 ERC Proof of Concept grant to conduct research in Portugal are:

  • Albino Oliveira Maia, Champalimaud Foundation, with the FoodConnect project,“Modulating feeding behavior in obesity: from brain lesions to non-invasive brain simulation targets”;
  • Ana Cecília Roque, UCIBIO – NOVA FCT, with the UNMASK project,“Unraveling Parkinson's disease diagnosis”;
  • Cristina Silva Pereira, ITQB/NOVA, with the SNAIL project, “High performance hydrophobic suberin nanoparticles for the generation of liquid-air biphasic droplets with application in food and therapeutics”;
  • Marina Costa Lobo, Institute of Social Sciences/ULisboa, with the PolarScopEU project,“Mapping and Matching Content Diversity and Bias in EU Online Social Networks”

Reference should also be made to the recent approval of a project on the reserve list of Call Grant 2023, worth €1.5 million, by researcher Nicolas Schaeffer, CICECO/University of Aveiro. Entitled "Hydrophobic Eutectic Solvents for Tailored Metal Separation and Recycling" ( DESignSX), it promotes sustainable metal separation processes with potential impacts on the metallurgical industry.

Published on January 18, 2024