Six new ERC Studentships for Portuguese scientists

TheEuropean Research Council (ERC) has awarded six new Studentships worth a total of 11.1 million euros to Portuguese researchers carrying out their scientific activity in FCT Units. These Studentships, called Starting Grants, are aimed at researchers at the beginning of their careers, with a duration of between 2 and 7 years. In the recent list of results released, this program awarded a total of 677 million euros to 436 European scientists. The Studentships last five years and allow the winners, from different scientific areas, to form their own research groups to develop their project approved for funding. 

The researchers and national projects included in the Call Starting Grants 2020 are:

Ricardo Agarez, from the Interdisciplinary Center for History, Cultures and Societies at the University of Évora, with the project ReARQ.IB - Built Environment Knowledge for Resilient, Sustainable Communities: Understanding Everyday Modern Architecture and Urban Design in the Iberian Peninsula (1939-1985), which aims to focus on the repurposing and revaluation of existing buildings to the detriment of new construction, saving economic and material resources.

Elias Barriga, from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, with the project MOVE_ME: Mechanical and Electrical Guidance of Collective Cell Migration in vivo;

Sónia Cruz, from the Center for Environmental and Marine Studies (CESAM) at the University of Aveiro, with the project KleptoSlug - Kleptoplasty: The sea slug that got away with stolen chloroplasts, which focuses on the process of kleptoplasty in sea slugs of the Sacoglossa order;

Bárbara Gomes, from the CIBB (Center for Innovative Biomedicine and Biotechnology) at the University of Coimbra, with the project EOLinPLACE - Choice of where we die: a classification reform to discern diversity in individual end of life pathways, a study on the experiences of citizens in relation to where they prefer to die and where they actually die;

Albino Oliveira Maia, from the Champalimaud Foundation, with the project CalorieRL: Reinforcement learning from post-ingestive calories: from body to brain in health and disease, which will investigate food choice in humans;

Paulo Rocha, from the University of Coimbra, with the GREEN: Generating Energy from Electroactive Algae project, which aims to generate clean and sustainable energy through communication between algae;

Filipe Calvão, a Portuguese researcher working at the Institut de Hautes Etudes Internationales et du Developpement, in Switzerland, with the project SYNTHLIVES - Synthetic Lives: The Futures of Mining.