ERC awards two more ERC Studentships of Concept Studentships to research in Portugal

The European Research Council(ERC) announced this week the research projects selected in Call Proof of Concept Grants, Studentships at projects previously funded by the ERC that seek to explore the commercial and social potential of research beyond research.

Of the 90 applications now selected for funding, two are led by researchers conducting their research in Portugal. The project led by Luís Pereira, from AlmaScience, CENIMAT/I3N, NOVA, entitled "CELLulose nanocomposite separators for the nEXt generation of smart batteries," will receive €150,000 in funding to use a combination of nanofibrillar cellulose and cellulose nanocrystals for batteries, opening up possibilities for exploring a wide range of bio-based products and recyclable/biodegradable materials in an application with growing market demand. The project led by Edgar Gomes, from the João Lobo Antunes Institute of Molecular Medicine, entitled "Human skeletal muscle platform for disease modeling and high-throughput drug screening," will also receive €150,000 in funding, but to develop skeletal muscle analogues (devices) to mimic human anatomy and with potential for the development of treatments and therapies for neuromuscular diseases (NMD).

To date, Portuguese research has already secured around €43 million in funding Calls European Research Council (ERC) Calls since the start of Horizon Europe (2021-2027), the European framework program for research and innovation funding.