Past winners
ERC Proof of Concept, recent awardees
€150,000 top-up for existing ERC grant holders to explore the commercial or societal potential of their research.
30 funded projects indexed from OpenAlex and CORDIS
Top countries
- DE×6
- ES×5
- IT×4
- NL×3
- FR×3
Top institutions
- STICHTING NEDERLANDSE WETENSCHAPPELIJK ONDERZOEK INSTITUTEN×2
- DEUTSCHES KREBSFORSCHUNGSZENTRUM HEIDELBERG×2
- SILICON AUSTRIA LABS GMBH×1
- UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA×1
- UNIVERSIDAD DE GRANADA×1
2027
Self-powered wireless sensor node through ultrahigh performance energy storage capacitors
SILICON AUSTRIA LABS GMBH · AT · €150,000
Wireless sensor nodes (WSN) are enablers for the Internet of Things (IoT), as they allow to collect distributed data about the environment, machine conditions, etc., even at remote locations. The key aspect for WSN is their energy-autonomy, namely perpetual operation without any external energy source. This is generally achieved by combining an energy harvesting module (e.g. solar cell) with a suitable energy storage module. Common energy storage devices for WSNs are batteries and supercapacitor
2026
MetaBoost: Metabolic Reprogramming for Neuronal Differentiation
UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA · PT · €150,000
"The transition from glycolytic to oxidative phosphorylation (OxPhos) metabolism is crucial for proper neuronal differentiation and maturation, a key process in generating functional neurons essential for advancing neuroscience research and therapeutic applications. However, commercially available media to generate neurons often overlook this key metabolic transition. MetaBoost aims to fill this gap by developing an innovative, easy-to-use, universally compatible media supplement that induces me
Spatial Awareness Avionics Network for Drone Swarms Aerosense
UNIVERSIDAD DE GRANADA · ES · €150,000
The drone swarm revolution promises to transform industries from defense to disaster relief, yet a fundamental bottleneck prevents its realization. Current systems lack true distributed spatial awareness—the ability for each drone to understand not only its neighbor’s positions but the swarm’s overall distribution. Today’s swarms rely on either centralized coordination or generic protocols that saturate with few units, forcing a tradeoff: accept external dependencies like GPS, or endure non-scal
An AI Agent to Support Environmental Intelligence by Interacting with Copernicus Earth Observation Data
TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAT BERLIN · DE · €150,000
With the unprecedented advances in the satellite technology, recent years have led to a significant increase in the volume of Earth observation (EO) data archives. In particular, through the Copernicus programme, which is the European flagship satellite initiative in EO, Sentinel satellites acquire a volume of roughly 20TB satellite images per day and the total size of the Copernicus data archives is almost a volume of 40PB. Thus, there has been a growing need for accurate and scalable technique
Uro-Lieve: Slow-Release Capsaicin Hydrogel for Disease-Modifying Therapy of Painful Bladder Syndrome
UNIVERSITY OF GALWAY · IE · €150,000
Painful Bladder Syndrome/Interstitial Cystitis (IC/BPS) is a chronic, debilitating pelvic pain condition that affects millions of predominantly female patients and lacks an effective, long-lasting therapy. Existing treatments—including oral drugs, intravesical instillations, and neuromodulation—are largely palliative, short-lived, or poorly tolerated. A promising therapeutic approach based on selective desensitisation of bladder pain fibres has shown prolonged analgesic potential in clinical stu
Zero-power acoustic emission monitoring for wind turbine blades
STICHTING NEDERLANDSE WETENSCHAPPELIJK ONDERZOEK INSTITUTEN · NL · €150,000
Damage in composite wind turbine blades generates high-frequency acoustic emission (AE) signals as it forms—the earliest warning of incipient failure, often manifesting months before other signatures appear. Yet AE monitoring has seen limited adoption: current systems are expensive, power-hungry, fragile, and require dense sensor networks. I propose a zero-power, battery-free MEMS sensor that passively recognizes and remembers AE events using a mechanical neural network. Fabricated at ultra-low
From Polymorphs of Racemic Compounds to Enantiopure Crystals
STICHTING NEDERLANDSE WETENSCHAPPELIJK ONDERZOEK INSTITUTEN · NL · €150,000
The molecular building blocks of life—such as sugars and amino acids—are of only one handedness. This broken molecular symmetry has important consequences for bioactive compounds: a molecule of one handedness can be an effective medicine while its mirror image is extremely toxic. Unfortunately, common chemical processes automatically yield both left- and right-handed molecules (i.e. enantiomers), and routes towards single handedness are often complicated, cumbersome, and costly. Therefore, there
A cardiac magnetic resonance solution to deliver a fast, fully automated, and comprehensive diagnostic assessment and interpretation of the patient’s cardiovascular health
UNIVERSITE DE BORDEAUX · FR · €150,000
HEARTERIX aims to evaluate the technical, clinical, and commercial feasibility of an innovative ERC-based technology that combines advanced image processing, artificial intelligence, and cutting-edge magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) solutions to automate and expedite the analysis and diagnosis of cardiac diseases. This technology has the potential to transform the clinical management of cardiac diseases by enhancing decision-support accuracy and improving efficiency through automatization. The g
Transformative Thin-Film Technologies: Harnessing Perovskite for Reliable and Sustainable Solar Energy – RISE
UNIVERSITAT DE BARCELONA · ES · €150,000
Halide perovskites have shown significant progress in the fabrication of solar cells and have leverage on light-emitting diodes, photodetectors, memristors, and energy devices. In halide perovskites, the defects stem from the imperfection of grains and lead to electrical losses, which can be suppressed by developing a microcrystal technology. To unlock the full potential of perovskites as a semiconductor pigment, we propose to scale up the microcrystal methodology, which we have developed in the
AI-Powered Clinical Decision Support System to Integrate Perinatal Mental Health into Routine Maternal Healthcare
UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA · ES · €150,000
Perinatal mental disorders, affecting one in five individuals from pregnancy to one year postpartum, are the most common complications of childbearing. Despite their significant impact on parents, children, and healthcare systems, preventive care remains limited due to an implementation gap. The ERC Starting Grant e-Perinatal developed and tested the ‘e-Perinatal App’, a mobile health intervention for women and partners, showing high acceptability and potential to prevent PMDs in routine care. B
DIfferential Operator for Non-ionizing Imaging of breast tumors with Speed-Of-Sound
CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS · FR · €150,000
Breast cancer remains the most common cancer and leading cause of cancer-related death in women in the EU. Although mammography is the gold standard for screening, it suffers from key limitations: it is ionizing, painful, and shows reduced sensitivity for dense breasts—a group already at higher risk. As a result, there is a critical need for a non-invasive, non-ionizing, and more effective imaging method to improve screening coverage and diagnostic accuracy. Ultrasound is a promising alternativ
LOKI: Loiasis-associated chronic kidney disease – towards clinical recognition and policy action
INSTITUT DE RECHERCHE POUR LE DEVELOPPEMENT · FR · €150,000
Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is an urgent but underrecognized health challenge in Central Africa, where diagnostic capacity is limited and renal replacement therapy is rare. While established drivers such as HIV, hypertension, and diabetes are acknowledged, the contribution of neglected tropical diseases remains unexplored. Loiasis, caused by the filarial parasite Loa loa and endemic in forested rural zones where >30% of adults are infected, has long been considered benign. Yet decades of case r
Responsive VR for urban sustainability: Promoting inclusion through affect-aware and behaviour-sensitive immersion
TAMPEREEN KORKEAKOULUSAATIO SR · FI · €150,000
VR-Sense is a proof-of-concept project that explores how virtual reality (VR) can be harnessed to promote sociopolitical aims. Urban planning is currentVR-Sense is a proof-of-concept project that explores how virtual reality (VR) can be harnessed to promote inclusive urban development and foster peaceful coexistence. Building on the ERC Starting Grant project EmergentCommunity, which combined experimental emotion research with qualitative studies on urban life, VR-Sense investigates how immersiv
Bright and Compact Tuneable Far-Ultraviolet Light Sources for Industrial Applications
HERIOT-WATT UNIVERSITY · UK · €150,000
This ERC Proof of Concept project aims to validate a novel Far-Ultraviolet (FUV) light source technology for industrial material processing, addressing a critical bottleneck in precision manufacturing. Current FUV lasers are limited by poor beam quality, low efficiency, or high cost. Our solution, based on Resonant Dispersive-Wave (RDW) emission in gas-filled hollow-core fibres (HCFs), overcomes these limitations by offering high brightness (M2≈1), high optical efficiency (up to 15%), continuous
AI-guided personalized T cell receptor transgenic T cell therapy against cancer
DEUTSCHES KREBSFORSCHUNGSZENTRUM HEIDELBERG · DE · €150,000
"Personalised T cell therapy has shown remarkable success in cancer therapy, however the antigens that T cells recognize to kill tumor cells are dependent on the individual tumor, T cell receptor (TCR) profile and antigen presentation machinery. AI-TreatCancer will leverage predicTCR, a proprietary AI-guided classifier that identifies tumor-killing TCRs from patient samples, decreasing the time to identify therapeutic TCRs from 3-4 months to under 2 weeks. In the ERC Advanced Grant (ERC-2023-AD
Seeing from a subjective viewpoint: Wireless magnetic tracking of eye position during natural vision and sleep
UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PARMA · IT · €150,000
Monitoring subjects' eye movement is crucial for neuroscientific research on perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes in health and disease, as well as sleep studies. In these fields, animal models - particularly non-human primates (NHPs) - remain essential. Traditional eye-tracking systems require a still head, conflicting with demand for ecologically relevant approaches to study spontaneous behavior driven by the spreading of wireless neural recording technologies. Yet a commercial device fo
Neuro-Symbolic Agentic AI Research Assistant
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ UNIVERSITAET HANNOVER · DE · €150,000
This PoC transforms our Neuro-Symbolic Science Knowledge Graph research into a deployable Research AIssistant that fuses large language models with the Open Research Knowledge Graph (ORKG). The assistant delivers knowledge-augmented generation grounded in structured, citable research contributions, with mandatory citations, constraint checks for study and method semantics, and uncertainty signalling. Building on results from the ERC-funded ScienceGraph project—now embodied in the ORKG and ORKG-A
Mitochondrial complex I activity promotes antigen cross-presentation in dendritic cells
Sofía C. Khouili · Instituto de Salud Carlos III · ES
Mitochondrial metabolism modulates immune cell signaling, yet how individual electron transport chain complexes fine-tune dendritic cell (DC) function remains unclear. Here, we identify mitochondrial complex I (CI) as a critical metabolic checkpoint controlling antigen cross-presentation by DCs in mice. Deficiency of the CI subunit NDUFS4 in DCs led to the formation of a nonfunctional CI subcomplex, resulting in mildly impaired mitochondrial respiration without triggering a compensatory glycolyt
Polymeric ice nucleators as additives for novel freezing media to improve cryopreservation
TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT EINDHOVEN · NL · €150,000
Although cryopreservation would allow for the long-term storage of sensitive materials and biological samples, it is not common practice because success rates vary greatly between different samples. Improving the success of cryopreservation techniques will make long-term storage more accessible across industries, clinics, and research institutes, enabling more effective use of patient-derived materials and “back-ups” of crucial cell lines. My ERC-consolidator grant project PROTECT focuses on the
Validating a versatile platform of novel standardized and biobankable preclinical mouse tumor models
DEUTSCHES KREBSFORSCHUNGSZENTRUM HEIDELBERG · DE · €150,000
Preclinical mouse tumor models are an indispensable experimental tool in cancer research. In turn, they also have limitations since most mouse tumor models do not adequately mimic the course of tumor development as it occurs in humans or the response to therapy. Moreover, there is no standardization of tumor models making it oftentimes difficult to compare the results of different studies. Lastly, animal welfare aspects casts increasing societal doubts about animal experimentation. We have withi
Origami-Enabled Gripping for Industrial Automation
UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI TRENTO · IT · €150,000
FLEXGRIP builds on breakthroughs from the ERC-CoG-funded SFOAM project to introduce a new class of scalable robotic grippers inspired by origami design. Instead of relying on bulky sensors, complex control, or energy-intensive actuators, FLEXGRIP exploits folding kinematics and geometric nonlinearity to adapt seamlessly to objects of different shapes, sizes, and materials. The result is a lightweight, hybrid rigid-soft design that combines the strength and payload of rigid grippers with the deli
Frankfurt Research Data Service
JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE-UNIVERSITAET FRANKFURT AM MAIN · DE · €150,000
In the digital economy, there is a significant imbalance in access to data. A few major US-based Tech companies, such as Google, Meta, and Amazon, collect large volumes of granular data about consumers, but do not provide much information about this data. Consequently, the European Union reacted. Particularly, the European Digital Markets Act (DMA) forces major Tech companies to provide European consumers access to their data, such as enabling them to export their information. This data covers,
A Wireless Peripheral-Cortical Interface for Real-Time Decoding of Motor Intent to Restore Assistive Control in Tetraplegia (AxonCtrl)
IMPERIAL COLLEGE OF SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICINE · UK · €150,000
Spinal cord injury (SCI) often results in paralysis and the permanent loss of hand and arm function, severely limiting independence and quality of life. Existing assistive technologies, such as surface electromyography, nerve implants, or brain–computer interfaces, are either too inaccurate, too invasive, or too unstable for long-term clinical use. To address this, we have developed intramuscular microelectrode arrays (MEAs) that can be implanted percutaneously to record the discharges of spinal
Drone Spin Code: Superscatterer Stickers for Radar Recognition of Drones
TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY · IL · €150,000
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are poised to revolutionize urban transportation. This implies frequent UAV flights in densely populated areas, offering substantial economic advantages by minimizing ground traffic, automating delivery processes, and enhancing logistic efficiency. The global drone delivery market is projected to reach billions, demonstrating a 49% CAGR from 2022 to 2030. However, this innovation also introduces significant security challenges as the risk of accidents becomes a sa
Light Injection & Collection Apparatus for TEMs: Facilitating Light-Enhanced Electron Microscopy
TECHNION - ISRAEL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY · IL · €150,000
Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is expanding across semiconductor metrology & inspection (M&I) and biological cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), yet both fields share the same bottleneck: insufficient contrast. In cryo-EM, most specimens are weak-phase objects, limiting visualization from single proteins to cells. In M&I, throughput and yield hinge on contrast, especially for 3D reconstructions of next-generation devices. Complementary photon pathways help: Collecting light by cathodolum
SoundHorse: Rhythmicity-based acoustic biomarkers for equine welfare
UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI ROMA LA SAPIENZA · IT · €150,000
Horses play essential roles in agriculture, sport, therapy, and recreation. The global equine industry is worth over $300 billion annually; just in the US, $1 billion are spent each year on managing lameness—a gait abnormality caused by locomotor disorders. Lameness is a leading cause of injury, premature death, and reduced performance in horses, raising serious animal welfare, economic, and societal concerns. Lameness has also extremely high prevalence, potentially affecting between 30% and 70%
Reactor for Upscaling ZEolite Assembly Leveraged On Unique Stirrers
KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN · BE · €150,000
Zeolites are microporous materials consisting of connected silica and alumina tetrahedra. They are key for the production of millions of tons of products as they are considered performance materials in catalysis and separation, guiding the transition to a circular carbon economy. Today, from myriads of possible compositions and combinations of tetrahedra, 270 different zeolite frameworks are documented, yet only about 15 of them are actually applied (or tried in applications) on an industrial (o
Gene therapeutic conversion from APOE4 to APOE3 to prevent Alzheimer’s disease
DEUTSCHES ZENTRUM FUR NEURODEGENERATIVE ERKRANKUNGEN EV · DE · €150,000
The major genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the presence of the E4 allele of apolipoprotein E (APOE4). APOE is the primary lipid transporter in the brain, mainly expressed by astrocytes, microglia and neurons. There exist three APOE alleles in humans (E2, E3, E4). APOE4 increases the AD risk by 15-fold in homozygous and by 4-fold in heterozygous individuals. The APOE3 is not associated with increased risk and APOE2 is even associated with a reduced AD risk. Thus, new
RNA splicing therapeutics for beta cell dysfunction and diabetes
UNIVERSIDAD POMPEU FABRA · ES · €150,000
Diabetes is a progressive metabolic disorder driven by beta cell dysfunction and failure, ultimately leading to chronic hyperglycemia and severe clinical complications. Current anti-diabetic treatments, including insulin secretagogues and incretin mimetics, primarily aim to control blood glucose levels without addressing the underlying molecular defects that drive beta cell decline, which in some cases even accelerate their exhaustion. Alternative splicing has recently emerged as a fundamental r
VIBRA-Kids: Wearable VIBRation and Audio interface to boost motor and cognitive impairment in children with cerebral palsy
UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI TORINO · IT · €150,000
Movements are essential for early development, allowing infants to link proprioceptive feedback with tactile, auditory, and visual inputs. This early multisensory association builds body awareness, spatial cognition, and social interaction. In cerebral palsy (CP), the most common congenital motor disability, affecting 2 to 3 children per 1,000 live births worldwide, this process is disrupted from birth. Without sufficient motor experience, children with CP lack the foundations for multisensory b