Wednesday, 26 January, 2011
CeNS researchers extremely successful at ERC grants application
Total of 10 Grants go to CeNS Members and Alumni
CeNS Members who received an ERC grant in 2010. Upper row (l-r): D. Braun, P. Cramer, H. Dietz, J. Feldmann; Lower row: R. Hillenbrand, T. Klar, P. Tinnefeld, D. Trauner.
The year 2010 has been an extremely successful year for researchers of the Center for NanoScience (CeNS). In the European-wide call for applications, members of CeNS could secure a total of 8 renowned grants in the fields of Life Sciences and Physical Sciences and Engineering. The European Research Council (ERC) is the first European funding body set up to support investigator-driven frontier research. Its main aim is to stimulate scientific excellence by supporting and encouraging the very best, truly creative scientists, scholars and engineers to be adventurous and take risks in their research. The scientists are encouraged to go beyond established frontiers of knowledge and the boundaries of disciplines.
The ERC Starting Independent Researcher Grants (ERC Starting Grants) aim to support up-and-coming research leaders who are about to establish or consolidate a proper research team and to start conducting independent research in Europe. The scheme targets promising researchers who have the proven potential of becoming independent research leaders. It will support the creation of excellent new research teams and will strengthen others that have been recently created.
The ERC Advanced Investigator Grant (ERC Advanced Grant) funding scheme complements the ERC Starting Grant funding scheme by targeting researchers who have already established themselves as independent research leaders in their own right. ERC Advanced Grants allow exceptional established research leaders in any field of science, engineering and scholarship to pursue frontier research of their choice. They aim to encourage risk-taking and interdisciplinarity, and supports pioneering frontier research projects.
Advanced Grants 2010 went to the following CeNS Members:
- Patrick Cramer (LMU Munich)
Mechanism of Regulated Transcription Initiation - Jochen Feldmann (LMU Munich)
Hybrid Nanosystems in phospholipid membranes - Dirk Trauner (LMU Munich)
Chemical Approaches to Restoring Vision
Starting Grants 2010 went to the following CeNS Members:
- Dieter Braun (LMU Munich)
Autonomous DNA Evolution in a Molecule Trap - Hendrik Dietz (TU Munich)
Single-molecule studies of protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions, enabled by DNA origami. - Rainer Hillenbrand (now at CIC nanoGUNE, Spain)
Near-field Spectroscopic Nanotomography at Infrared and Terahertz Frequencies
- Thomas Klar (now at Linz University, Austria)
Active and low loss nano photonics (ActiveNP) - Philip Tinnefeld (now at TU Braunschweig)
Single-Molecule BioAssays at Elevated Concentrations
In addition to these prizes, two CeNS Alumni (former PhD students at CeNS) received a Starting Grant in 2010:
- Richard Neher (now at the MPI for Developmental Biology, Tübingen)
"Intra-patient Evolution of HIV" - Carsten Sönnichsen (now at University of Mainz)
"Single metal nanoparticles as molecular sensors"