European Research Council funding

A major investment of my time last year and this year was in putting together an application for a European Research Council Start grant. The process was quite an ordeal, with both a substantial written grant and a challenging oral defense, probably consuming over 100 hours of my time. Fortunately, with excellent independent researchers in the laboratory, great research continued to be done in the laboratory while I was locked away with the computer.

Being open to researchers across Europe, in any discipline, the competition is fierce, however there are some large advantages to the ERC Start grant process: 1) the committee looks favourably upon large ideas, rather than safe ideas; 2) the competition is segregated according to career stage, so that I was only competing with other researchers less than five years out from their PhD; 3) the funding is sufficient in scale and duration to really put forward a grand plan. Just recently I found out that the application was approved, and the VIB put out the following press release:

VIB receives high score from European Research Council (ERC)
Two young top researchers awarded €1.5 million research grants!

Leuven - VIB landed two research grants worth 1.5 million euros each. The prestigious grants are courtesy of the European Research Council (ERC) and are aimed at giving talented young scientists the opportunity to develop their own research team. The honor fell to Adrian Liston and Patrik Verstreken, both recently transferred to VIB-K.U.Leuven from abroad.

The European Research Council
ERC was created to encourage excellent research in Europe. ERC starting grants give young talented researchers the opportunity to develop a research group. At present, there are still too few opportunities in Europe for young scientists to initiate and lead their own research, which is extremely unfortunate as it results in top researchers leaving the region to develop their careers elsewhere.

Adrian Liston studies autoimmune diseases.
The immune system is our body's defense system and allows it to fight off foreign substances and micro-organisms. In people with an autoimmune disease, the immune system has gone awry: it can no longer distinguish between the body's own and foreign substances and ends up attacking vital tissues and organs. Adrian Liston studies immune system cells (T cells) that are responsible for this malfunction. With his ERC research grant, he plans to bridge the gap between his research on mice models and humans. This may be a first step in the development of new therapies for autoimmune diseases.

Patrik Verstreken explores the communication between brain cells.
Brain disorders take a major toll on society. Many brain diseases are caused by the disruption of communication between brain cells. Finding a solution depends on understanding this communication in the smallest detail. Patrik Verstreken uses the fruit fly as his model organism for studying genes involved in the communication between brain cells. The ERC research grant gives him the opportunity to expand his research to more complex neural communication networks that control behavior. This step is crucial if we are to understand neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease.

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