Nutrition, health, housing, research: many areas of modern life rely heavily on artificial cooling. However, the historical and contemporary implications of this technology are still largely unexplored. The demand for cooling is rapidly increasing due to global warming and will soon drastically exceed our planet’s energy budget. What can be done about it? Together with international colleagues, Dr. Stefan Höhne from the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) Essen is looking for answers. Their outstanding research idea is now being funded by the European Research Council (ERC) with a prestigious Synergy Grant totalling almost ten million euros.

A team of researchers from the Universities of Münster, Bremen, Duisburg-Essen and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam has been awarded a prestigious ERC Synergy Grant worth a total of 11.5 million euros. In the six-year project “Archean Park”, the scientists – including UDE Professor Dr. Alexander Probst – want to gain insights into life as it existed under primeval conditions and discover unknown metabolic pathways that enabled microorganisms to live on the early Earth 4,000 to 2,500 million years ago. 2.56 million euros of the funding will go to the UDE.

Europe’s leading funding organisation, the European Research Council (ERC), is supporting skin cancer research by scientists at the UDE Faculty of Medicine with 1.5 million euros until 2028. The ERC is funding the oncologist and dermatologist Prof. Dr. Dr. Alpaslan Tasdogan with a Starting Grant. The aim of Professor Tasdogan and his team is to better understand why healthy cells turn into malignant skin cancer cells, spread throughout the body and how these metastases can be combated.

The properties of modern materials, which are often composites consisting of various components with their individual favorable attributes, are of scientific and industrial interest especially with regard to optimizing their characteristics. To reduce costs in this sphere of investigation, physical experimental measurements are partly replaced by intuitive and well-reasoned simulations. In his project "BeyongRVE", Professor Matti Schneider investigates ground-breaking novel simulation techniques to use the 3D image data without the interference of tainting boundary effects. As a consequence, a technological leap in precise and efficient digital material characterization is to be expected.

Anyone who uses digital contracts, so-called smart contracts, should be wary of hacker attacks. Prof. Dr. Lucas Davi from the UDE's paluno software engineering institute is developing a solution to find and fix security vulnerabilities in the contracts already during programming and later in use. For this he receives a 1.5 million euro Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC).

Jan C. Jansen is Principal Investigator of the project "Atlantic Exiles," funded by a Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC). Based on a number of case studies in the Caribbean and on the American continent, the project explores the history of revolutionary-era refugee movements. 

Since 2023, Prof. Dr. Gabi Schierning has been strengthening the UDE with the ERC project "MATTER - MAcroscopic quantum transport maTERials by nanoparticle processing". As a experimental physicist, Gabi Schierning is working on electron transport in electron transport in solids.

The political scientist from UDE has been awarded a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) with a high endowment of two million euros. This will enable him to implement his ambitious POLITSOLID project, which investigates political solidarities in Europe, over the next five years.

Mathematician and UDE professor Dr. Marc Levine receives one of the coveted ERC Advanced Grants. With these, the European Research Council supports groundbreaking and visionary research. 2.1 million euros will go to Levine - who is a world-leading expert in the field of algebraic geometry - to enable him to realize his project over the next five years. It's called QUADAG - Quadratic refinements in algebraic geometry.

Prof. Dr. Richard Kramer Campen, head of the Chemical Physics of Interfaces research group at UDE, is awarded the prestigious Consolidator Grant of the European Research Council (ERC) for his project "Electron Transfer Across Solid/Liquid Interfaces: Elucidating Elementary Processes from Femtoseconds to Seconds" (SOWLET).

One of the most prestigious and, at 2.5 million euros, also one of the most highly endowed international research prizes, the Advanced Grant of the European Research Council (ERC), goes this year to Prof. Dr. Rainer Meckenstock of the UDE, among others. The selection criterion was excellent scientific quality, and the prize is considered the "Nobel Prize of the EU". His research group at the UDE Biofilm Centre can now conduct intensive research into how petroleum is microbially degraded.

Outstanding scientists with an excellent research project have a twelve percent chance of being awarded the coveted Advanced Investigators Grant of the European Research Council (ERC). This is exactly what Prof. Dr. Mark Ladd has now achieved: The expert in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at the UDE has received the honorary accolade from the European research world, combined with 2.1 million euros to be able to implement the proposed project.

International recognition: Prof. Dr. Markus Kaiser of the UDE) has been awarded a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) grant for his research in chemical biology. He received the "Starting Independent Researcher Grant", which is endowed with 1.49 million euros.

The ERC funding awards are among the most prestigious research awards in Europe. With them, the Research Council supports excellent scientists who want to realize visionary ideas.

Mathematician Prof. Dr. Hélène Esnault from the UDE has now been awarded an honorable distinction: She has been awarded the "Advanced Grant" of the European Research Council (ERC), which is highly endowed with one million euros.

This grant is awarded to top international researchers who have made outstanding achievements in their field over the last ten years and are to be given the necessary freedom to conduct research for attractive new projects in the European region. The ERC is a newly established instrument of European research funding that supports excellence in basic research and is modeled on the German Research Foundation.