30 ERC Grants Awarded to Researchers from UNICA Member Universities (20 Advanced Grants + 10 Proof of Concept)
01 July 2026 | From our Members - Funding
Researchers from UNICA member universities have achieved great success in the latest European Research Council (ERC) funding rounds, with 20 researchers from 12 UNICA member universities awarded ERC Advanced Grants and 10 researchers from 9 UNICA member universities receiving Proof of Concept Grants in 2026.
The schemes are funded under Horizon Europe, the EU’s framework programme for research and innovation.
ERC Advanced Grants
The Advanced Grants give senior researchers the opportunity to pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven projects that could lead to major scientific breakthroughs. A total funding, worth €838 million, will go to 319 leading researchers across Europe.
Looking at the UNICA member universities awarded, the University of Edinburgh takes the lead with a total of four projects, closely followed by the University of Copenhagen and University College Dublin, with three projects each.
The 2026 funding round is now open for applications, with the deadline set for 27 August 2026.
Discover all researchers from UNICA member universities awarded with ERC Advanced Grants below.
| Researcher’s Name | University | Project’s Name |
| CORTEN Olivier | Université Libre de Bruxelles | From hybrid war to hybrid law? Questioning the resilience of (formalism in) international law |
| CONSTANTINOU Stavroula | University of Cyprus | Medieval Hagiography and Healthcare across Media and Performances |
| PESSAH Martin Elias | University of Copenhagen | Black Hole Binaries in Turbulent Magnetized Disks |
| RANDO Oliver | University of Copenhagen | Biogenesis and function of the mammalian sperm epigenome |
| SCHAEFFER Merlin | University of Copenhagen | Contested Discrimination: The Societal Struggle over the Definition and Prevalence of Ethno-Racial Discrimination in Europe |
| FERMANIS Porscha | University College Dublin | Anticolonialism, Pan-Asianism, and Periodical Culture in Southeast Asia, c. 1850-1920 |
| JOHNSON Rory | University College Dublin | Directed Evolution to Understand and Engineer Bioactive Long Noncoding RNAs |
| O’MULLANE Anthony | University College Dublin | Adaptive Liquid Metal Electrocatalytic Reaction Systems |
| MUSARRA Antonio | Sapienza University of Rome | Sailing Beyond the Crisis. Comparative Perspectives on Social, Economic, and Cultural Changes in the Late Medieval Mediterranean (ca. 1250-1450) |
| ESPOSITO Massimiliano | University of Luxembourg | Energy and Self-Organisation in Systems Chemistry: Building the Missing Theory |
| ALONI Maria | University of Amsterdam | Cognitive Biases in Reasoning and Interpretation |
| KAILA Ville | Stockholm University | Currents of Life – Molecular Mechanism of Long-Range Biological Energy Transduction |
| ZNIDARIC Marko | University of Ljubljana | Effective non-unitarity in many body systems |
| BAYER Arend | University of Edinburgh | Algebraic Geometry from Derived categories: constructions and obstructions |
| JACKSON Andrew | University of Edinburgh | Mechanisms of Epigenetic Ageing and Sizing |
| KELLY Tobias | University of Edinburgh | Private Detectives: An Anthropology of Investigation and Evidence |
| NUSSEY Daniel H | University of Edinburgh | How senescence and the environment shape fitness in the wild |
| DEEG Max | Cardiff University | Tracing Indian Buddhist Developments Across Littoral South Asia |
| GROTE Hartmut | Cardiff University | Single Photon Detection Interferometry for Quantum Gravity |
| ZAYATS Anatoly | King’s College London | Emerging frontiers in nanophotonics: integrating optical and electron spins in nanophotonic devices |
Learn more about the projects awarded in this ERC call.
ERC Proof of Concept Grants
Proof of Concept Grants support researchers in exploring the commercial or societal potential of their research findings. NOVA University Lisbon leads among UNICA universities, with two awardees.
In total, 182 researchers have been awarded in this round, representing a budget worth €27.3 million. The researchers will each receive €150 000, supporting
The ERC 2026 work programme includes two rounds of the call for Proof of Concept Grants with a total budget of €60 million. The next funding round is now open for applications, with the deadline of 17 September 2026. The scheme is open only to researchers who currently hold, or have previously been awarded, ERC frontier research grants.
Discover all researchers from UNICA member universities awarded with ERC Proof of Concept grants below.
| Researcher’s Name | University | Project’s Name |
| ROTTENBERG Sven | University of Bern | Metabolic Hepatoprotection to Enable Curative Cancer Therapy in Patients with Vulnerable Livers |
| CAPPELLINI Enrico | University of Copenhagen | Sex Commercialisation of a High-Throughput Proteomic Service for Biological Sex Identification of Ancient and Degraded Human Remains |
| NOWLAN Niamh | University College Dublin | Identifying physeal cell surface markers for paediatric growth modulation |
| TKATCHENKO Alexandre | University of Luxembourg | Closed-loop machine learning platform for the optimisation of battery materials |
| STEIN Felix | University of Amsterdam | Establishing the Centre for Reparative Finance |
| BRITO Cristina | NOVA University of Lisbon | Whales in the Wall: A Scalable Cultural Digital Twin Infrastructure for Europe’s Ocean Heritage |
| CONDE João | NOVA University of Lisbon | APOLLO-BC: Advanced Perfused platform for Breast Cancer therapy-response prediction |
| VAN DER VALK Tom | Stockholm University | A genome-scale platform for automated biodiversity monitoring and regulatory reporting |
| MICHIELETTO Davide | University of Edinburgh | Capture Selective condensates to capture, isolate and enrich cancer biomarkers |
| PERA TITUS Marc | Cardiff University | Novel Electrolyzer for ProducTion of green H2 Using fresh & coNtaminated watEr |
Learn more about the projects awarded in this ERC call.
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.