Grant winners

European Research Council

Starting grant competition - life sciences

Almost €580 million (£491 million) has been awarded by the ERC in its third starting grant competition, via awards of up to €2 million to early career researchers. Listed below are a number of UK-based winners in the life sciences.

• Award winner: Francois Balloux

• Institution: Imperial College London

Building an integrated genetic infectious disease epidemiology approach

• Award winner: Sonia Bishop

• Institution: University of Cambridge

Neurocognitive mechanisms of human anxiety: identifying and targeting disrupted function

• Award winner: Joanna Coast

• Institution: University of Birmingham

The economic evaluation of end-of-life care

• Award winner: Frederic Geissmann

• Institution: King's College London

In vivo biology of the mononuclear phagocyte system: a molecular and functional approach

• Award winner: Adam Giangreco

• Institution: University College London

The role of tumour suppressor of lung cancer 1 (TSLC1) signalling in lung repair and cancer-associated epithelial-mesenchymal transitions (EMTs)

• Award winner: Stephan Gruber

• Institution: University of Oxford

Untangling the bacterial chromosome: condensin's role in sister chromosome separation and its mechanisms

• Award winner: Angelika Grundling

• Institution: Imperial College London

Functional analysis of listeria and staphylococcus lipoteichoic acid

• Award winner: Keisuke Kaji

• Institution: University of Edinburgh

Dissection of molecular signature transformation during the process of pluripotency induction

• Award winner: Achillefs Kapanidis

• Institution: University of Oxford

Single-molecule analysis of DNA polymerase in vitro and in vivo: a machine in action

• Award winner: Ulrich Felix Keyser

• Institution: University of Cambridge

Passive membrane transport of organic compounds

• Award winner: Toomas Kivisild

• Institution: University of Cambridge

An interdisciplinary approach for identifying evolutionary active regions in the human genome

• Award winner: Nikolaus Kriegeskorte

• Institution: Medical Research Council

Visual object population codes relating human brains to nonhuman and computational models with representational similarity analysis

• Award winner: Suman Lata

• Institution: University of Bristol

Mechanics of ESCRT-III mediated membrane scission

• Award winner: Eric Alexander Miska

• Institution: University of Cambridge

sRNA regulatory networks

• Award winner: Sergey Nejentsev

• Institution: University of Cambridge

Understanding genetic control of global gene expression in human macrophages to discover new immune mechanisms protecting from tuberculosis

• Award winner: Lori Anne Passmore

• Institution: Medical Research Council

Macromolecular machines that regulate mRNA poly(A) tails: mechanisms of polyadenylation and deadenylation

• Award winner: Stefano Pluchino

• Institution: University of Cambridge

Secreted membrane vesicles: role in the therapeutic plasticity of neural stem cells

• Award winner: Sarah Polonius-Teichmann

• Institution: Medical Research Council

Decoding genetic switches in T helper cell differentiation

• Award winner: Markus Ralser

• Institution: University of Cambridge

System-wide analysis of regulatory processes that mediate at the border of metabolome and proteome

• Award winner: Jens Olaf Rolff

• Institution: University of Sheffield

Multi-drug resistance and the evolutionary ecology of insect immunity

• Award winner: Mala Shah

• Institution: School of Pharmacy, University of London

Investigating the role of pre-synaptic HCN1 channels in regulating cortical synaptic transmission and plasticity

• Award winner: Francesco Simonetti

• Institution: Imperial College London

Breast ultrasound tomography for the early detection of cancer

• Award winner: Simon Nicholas Waddington

• Institution: University College London

Easy and rapid generation of light-emitting somatic-transgenic mice to monitor specific disease states and to screen effective drugs

• Award winner: Heather Whitney

• Institution: University of Bristol

The adaptive advantages, evolution and development of iridescence in leaves

IN DETAIL

• Award winner: Judith Elizabeth Mank

• Institution: University of Oxford

The genomic and transcriptomic locus of sex-specific selection in birds

Although it is widely understood that genes contribute to the phenotypes that form the basis of selection, the nature and process of the relationship between the two remains largely theoretical. By harnessing emergent DNA sequencing technologies, this project will measure evolutionary change in gene expression and coding sequence in response to different sex-specific selection regimes in a clade of birds with divergent mating systems. It will seek to create a cohesive integrated understanding of the relationship between evolution, the genome and the animal form. The work will be complemented by the development of mathematical models of sex-specific evolution.