Portugal has already secured €81 million from the European Research Council

TheEuropean Research Council (ERC ) announced today, November 23, the 308 projects selected in Call Grants 2023 – ERC. This list includes three projects by researchers working in Portugal, which have secured €6 million in funding (€2 million each). At the beginning of November, another Call (Starting Grant) approved a project led by Portugal, with funding of €1.5 million.

With these results, research carried out at institutions belonging to the National Science and Technology System (SNCT) has reached a total of around €81 million in funding and 51 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.

The winners of the Consolidator Grant 2023 to conduct research in Portugal are:

• Pedro Sousa-Victor, from the Institute of Molecular Medicine, with the project “The Interplay of Aging, Immune Signaling, and Stem Cell Function,” which will analyze the changes that affect the immune system as people age;
• Manuel Mendes, from NOVA's Materials Research Center (CENIMAT-i3N), with the project "Power-to-X: STREAMing Hydrogen from 3-Band Solar Cells boosted with Photonic Management,"which aims to create high-efficiency solar cells, applied, for example, to water splitting;
• Sidh Mendiratta, Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, with the project “Building Identity: Religious Architecture and Sacred Landscapes of Christian Minorities in India and Bangladesh”, which aims to address the critical challenges faced by Christian minorities in contemporary India and Bangladesh.

The winner of the Starting Grant to conduct research in Portugal is:

• Catarina Santos, from the Center for Marine and Environmental Sciences (MARE)/University of Lisbon, with the project “Planning for Sustainable Ocean Use in Antarctica Under Global Environmental Change”, on marine spatial planning with a focus on Antarctica.

Results of the Portuguese Diaspora

In Call Consolidator Grants 2023, whose results were announced today, November 23, two projects led by a Portuguese researcher and a Portuguese researcher conducting their research abroad were also funded, totaling €4 million in funding:

• João Mendonça, Technical University of Denmark, with the project “Building Virtual Worlds that Follow Universal Laws of Physics”, which aims to develop the first climate simulator that can be universally applied to any planet in the solar system;

• Flor Avelino, Utrecht University, “Power Dynamics in Transformative Social Innovation”, which addresses the question of how and when potentially transformative social innovations are capable of translating into genuine and sustainable changes in society.

Reference also to the success of a researcher from the diaspora in Call Synergy Grant 2023 Call .

• Lourenço Beirão da Veiga, University of Milan-Bicocca, who has spent almost his entire professional career in Italy, with a PhD from the University of Pavia and IST, was funded under the Call Synergy Grants and will develop new methods for numerical simulations in collaboration with institutions in France, Italy, and Australia.