Two UCD researchers secure €5m in ERC Advanced Grants
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The latest round of ERC Advanced Grants saw 281 researchers receive €721m in funding.
Two researchers from University College Dublin (UCD) have been awarded funding from the European Research Council (ERC) as part of the latest round of the Advanced Grants competition.
Prof Kylie Jarrett and Dr Barry Wardell each received a grant worth €2.5m to assist their research projects. The two were the only Ireland-based recipients of the latest Advanced Grants round, which awarded a total of €721m to 281 researchers in Europe.
Jarrett, a professor of information and communication studies at UCD, received funding for her project ‘Livelihoods in the Platform Economy Ecosystem’, or LivePlatforms, which explores the rapidly growing ecosystem of livelihoods generated through digital platforms such as Deliveroo, Upwork and YouTube.
“From delivery riders to influencers, work mediated by digital platforms takes many varied forms and is increasingly important to the economy,” explained Jarrett. “It is therefore vital we build up a more holistic picture of the ecosystem of which it is composed.
“The support of the ERC will allow us to build this picture at a large scale, generating important insight into the Irish context while also developing a model for researching platform work at a national scale that can be applied elsewhere.”
Wardell, an associate professor of applied and computational mathematics, will use his grant for his project titled ‘Waveforms for Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals’, or EMRIWaveforms, which aims to develop models to accurately detect and analyse gravitational waves, which are ripples in the fabric of space-time emitted during powerful astronomical events.
The EMRIWaveforms team will work with the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) – which is the first mission to probe the entire history of the universe using gravitational waves – to find and decode these signals.
“Gravitational waves have opened a completely new way of exploring the universe – but we’ve only just scratched the surface,” said Wardell. “With the upcoming LISA mission from the ESA, we’ll be able to ‘hear’ signals from some of the most extreme events in the cosmos, including black holes the size of our sun spiraling into supermassive black holes millions of times larger.
“Thanks to the support of the ERC, my team will develop the first accurate models of these signals, helping LISA unlock discoveries that are currently out of reach. This research is key to making sure we don’t miss some of the universe’s most fascinating secrets.”
Researchers based in 23 EU member states and associated countries received the latest cohort of Advanced Grants, which is a part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme. The UK received the highest number of grants (56), followed by Germany (35), Italy (25), the Netherlands (24) and France (23).
The latest funding round received a total of 2,534 applications and, according to the ERC, the grants will create approximately 2,700 jobs in the teams of new grantees.
The awarded projects cover a wide variety of subjects, including the development of a preventive vaccine for hereditary breast cancer, how diet and exercise affect brain cells related to ageing, and the exploration of hidden oceans on Jupiter’s and Saturn’s moons.
Ekaterina Zaharieva, European commissioner for start-ups, research and innovation, stated that the latest batch of Advanced Grants shows the EU’s “commitment to making Europe the world’s hub for excellent research”.
“By supporting projects that have the potential to redefine whole fields, we are not just investing in science but in the future prosperity and resilience of our continent.”
The call is now open for the 2025 Advanced Grants funding round, with the ERC accepting applications until 28 August. As well as the standard grants, the ERC is offering additional funding to help new grantees establish their laboratories or research team.
According to the ERC, this additional funding is being doubled from up to €1m to up to €2m for researchers who relocate from overseas to EU member states or countries associated with Horizon Europe as part of the ‘Choose Europe’ initiative.
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