10 researchers from UNICA member universities awarded with ERC’s Proof of Concept Grants
01 July 2026 | From our Members - Funding
10 researchers from 9 UNICA member universities have been granted Proof of Concept Grants from the European Research Council (ERC) in the first round of the 2026 call. The researchers will each receive €150 000, supporting them in exploring the commercial or societal potential of their research findings. NOVA University Lisbon lead among UNICA universities, with two awardees.
In total, 182 researchers have been awarded in this round, representing a budget worth €27.3 million. The scheme is funded under Horizon Europe, the EU’s framework programme for research and innovation.
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 Proof of Concept Grants:
| 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.