Record number of researchers in Sweden to get ERC Starting Grant

Among the 23 researchers receiving ERC Starting Grants, 5 are active in social sciences and humanities, 5 in physical and engineering sciences and 13 in life sciences.

–This is a record year for Sweden, both for the number of research projects approved, but also for the number of funded projects within humanities and social sciences. The number approved within life sciences also breaks the record. Sweden’s approval rate of 15% is also higher than the overall approval rate for ERC Starting Grants, which is 13%, says Lena Renner, national contact person for the ERC.

Approved research projects 2020

Chalmers University of Technology

• Jessica Jewell: MANIFEST MechANIsms and actors of Feasible Energy Transitions
• Marianne Liebi: MUMOTT Multi-Modal Tensor Tomography

University of Gothenburg

• Björn Redfors: De-StunHeartAttacks Re-defining clinical care and reasoning in ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) by shifting focus to ischemic myocardial stunning - Mechanisms prognostic implications and a new treatment
• Bettina Schulz Paulsson: NEOSEA Neolithic Seafaring and Maritime Technologies shaped a New World of Megalithic Societies (4700-3500 cal BC)

Karolinska Institutet

• Niklas Björkström: RESIDE Dissecting tissue-resident lymphocyte homeostasis in humans
• Nils Landegren: SEXimmune Deciphering sex differences in the human immune system
• Janina Seubert: OLFLINK Olfaction as the link between flavor preference formation and retrieval during food consumption

KTH, Royal Institute of Technology

• Ian Hoffecker: DNA_MICROSCOPY In situ DNA sequencing-based microscopy for subcellular spatial transcriptomics

Linköpings universitet

• Eric Glowacki: OPTEL-MED Optoelectronic medicine - nerve cell regulation with light

Lund University

• Paul Bourgine: hOssicle Bioengineering of human ossicles as advanced in vivo hematopoietic model
• Nathalie Feiner: EvoOnRepeat Unravelling the developmental origins of parallel evolution
• Alison Gerber: SHOW AND TELL Show and Tell: Scientific representation, algorithmically generated visualizations, and evidence across epistemic cultures
• Emma Hammarlund: ParadOX The hardships for life to become big – rethinking hypoxia as an evolutionary driver for the rise of complex multicellularity
• Rik Ossenkoppele: TAU-NOW Tau Pathology in Alzheimer’s disease: Spreading and Resilience
• Pablo Villanueva Perez: 3DX-FLASH Probing MHz processes in 3D with X-ray microscopy

Stockholm University

• Mikael Lundqvist: Hot-Coal WM The Hot-Coal hypothesis of working memory
  
• Ben Wilson: REFU-GEN A Better Life for the Children of Exile: Intergenerational Adaptation of the Descendants of Refugees

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

• Barbara Locke Grandér: BEE NATURAL A sustainable future for honeybees by unravelling the mechanisms of natural disease resistance
• Maria Westerholm: SYNAG Deciphering the network of microbial, environmental and physical factors underlying aggregation and enhanced performance in syntrophic microorganism communities

Umeå University

• Jonas Barandun: PolTube A molecular model of the microsporidian infection apparatus

Uppsala University

• Magnus Johansson: SMACK Single-molecule tracking for live-cell protein synthesis kinetics
  
• Gabriele Messori: CENAE compound Climate Extremes in North America and Europe: from dynamics to predictability
  
• Chao Zhang: DeepProton Deep multi-scale modelling of electrified metal oxide nanostructures

The ERC website has more statistics and a list of all the grant recipients

Sweden and ERC Starting Grant 2016–2020

Over the last five years, 89 researchers in Sweden have received an ERC Starting Grant.