ERC distinguished four Portuguese projects in Proof of Concept Grants

The European Research Council ( ERC) announced today the results of Call Proof of Concept Grants, in which four projects by Portuguese researchers were selected. Each project will receive funding of around €150,000, which translates into a total of €600,000 allocated to Portuguese research in this Call.

The ERC approved a total of 166 projects that applied for this edition of Call Proof of Concept Grants Call , corresponding to around €25 million of investment in European science, of which Portuguese researchers managed to secure 2.4% of the available funding.

The Portuguese researchers whose projects were approved for funding by the ERC, under the Proof of Concept Grants, were: Manuela Gomes from the Institute for Research in Biomaterials, Biodegradables, and Biomimetics (3B's) at the University of Minho, with the project: "BioCHIPS – Biofabricated microfluidics CHIPS based on self-assembling of CNCs to recreate the hierarchical fibrillar structure of human tissues ECM"; Elvira Fortunato from the Materials Research Center (CENIMAT-i3N) at the New University of Lisbon, with the project: “From Forest to Electronics: Green Graphene”; João Barata from the Institute of Molecular Medicine (iMM) at the University of Lisbon, with the project “A microRNA-regulated cell death-inducing gene therapy for T-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia”; and Cecília Roque from the Applied Biomolecular Sciences Unit – Institute for Health and Bioeconomy (UCIBIO – i4HB), with the project “Non-invasive follow-up of urinary tract cancers.”

Proof of Concept Grants are an extension of the financial support granted to projects previously selected for one of the other ERC Studentships . They aim to facilitate the exploration of the commercial and social innovation potential of scientific research by providing the means to develop additional work to explore and test ideas and establish partnerships with a view to enabling the transfer of research results into concrete applications.

Overall, 54% of the selected European projects are in the fields of physical sciences and engineering, around one-third are in the life sciences, and 11% are in the social sciences and humanities. It is also noteworthy that 48 of the selected principal investigators are women.

In the words of ERC President Maria Leptin, "frontier research has the capacity to generate discoveries that can be quickly put into practice," and that "applied research cannot exist without the basic research that feeds it." Hence, Proof of Concept Grants, in association with the other Studentships Horizon Europe program, are fundamental to fostering the development and applicability of innovative scientific research in new areas and new topics. In Portugal, the FCT coordinates support for the scientific community for the Horizon Europe program, which was renewed last year for the period 2021-2027, through Delegates and National Contact Points (NPCs).