SciLifeLab and DDLS Fellows receive ERC Starting Grants for 2024
SciLifeLab Fellow William Nyberg (KI), and DDLS Fellows Tom van der Valk (NRM) and Mariana Pires Braga (SU), who will start her position as a DDLS Fellow in January 2025, have been awarded 2024 ERC Starting Grants. Charlotte Thålin (KI), who led the COMMUNITY study, an important research initiative that was part of the SciLifeLab/Knut & Alice Wallenberg COVID-19 research program, also received an ERC Starting Grant.
During 2024, the European Research Council (ERC) has awarded 494 Starting Grants, worth nearly €780 million, to young promising early-career researchers across Europe. The funding is meant to help researchers at the beginning of their careers to launch their own projects, form their teams, and pursue their most promising ideas.
From T cells to tropical butterflies, the ERC-funded projects showcase the breadth of the SciLifeLab research community
SciLifeLab Fellow William Nyberg’s ERC project (INVIVO-CAR T) aims to develop and improve T cell therapies of cancers using gene technologies and screening platforms.
“The ERC starting grant gives me a platform to expand into higher risk projects with more potential for future therapies, including large screens of synthetic receptors and to develop in vivo reprogramming of T cells further. I plan to build up my lab at SciLifeLab in Solna and if anyone is interested in T cell therapies, gene engineering, library screening, and in vivo applications I am more than happy to collaborate!” says William.
DDLS Fellow Mariana Pires Braga aims to investigate why tropical species of butterflies seem to interact with fewer host plants, leaving them vulnerable to co-extinction. Her project, SPECTRO, in which she plans to uncover the mechanisms behind this phenomenon, might help close the large knowledge gap for tropical butterfly species (90% of all butterfly species) compared to colder climate species. This information could be vital in a time of rapid global change.
“We will investigate if tropical species are indeed more specialized, and which mechanisms cause this difference. We will also develop an efficient pipeline for gathering new data on the host plants that are used by tropical butterflies that later can be used for any host-parasite system. This grant will provide me with an opportunity to use very different and complementary approaches to tackle a scientific problem that has both theoretical and applied relevance,” explains Mariana.
DDLS Fellow Tom van der Valk receives the grant for his project The genomic impact of ancient structural variants on species extinction.
Congratulatory comments and acknowledgment from Jan Ellenberg, the new Director of SciLifeLab
“I would like to warmly congratulate our four young fellows on their ERC Starting Grants! We are very proud to see that SciLifeLab attracts top-tier early-career researchers internationally, from diverse scientific disciplines. Our ERC Starting Grant recipients are a testament to the world-class research environment we strive to create at SciLifeLab as a global research hub,” he says.
