Eleven UvA researchers named as recipients of ERC Starting Grants

Eleven researchers from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) have been named as recipients of Starting Independent Researcher Grants from the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grants). Starting Grants are large, individual grants awarded to promising young academics who demonstrate the qualities needed to become independent research leaders. Researchers each receive approximately 1.5 million euros to fund their work over a five-year period. This year's round saw the ERC award a total of around 660 million euros in grant money, providing funding for some five or six hundred European researchers. With 11 grants awarded to researchers at the UvA, the UvA has the largest number of grant recipients of any Dutch university.

Five of the grants will go to researchers at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. Sociologist Caroline Dewilde will investigate whether changes in housing regimes may help explain the growing social and economic inequality seen in modern welfare states since the seventies. Political scientist Maria Koinova will study the transnational mobilisation of diasporas in Europe and their impact on immigrants' original homelands in the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East. Human geographer Richard Ronald will explore the role that homeownership plays in welfare states and how healthcare systems are affected by housing markets. Psychologist Eric-Jan Wagenmakers plans to develop Bayesian hypothesis tests social scientists. Anthropologist Jarret Zigon will also receive a Starting Grant (details of his research have yet to be specified).

Three grant recipients will conduct their research at the Faculty of Science. Theoretical physicist Gianfranco Bertone will study experimental results from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and from the next generations of astroparticle experiments with the aim of defining the characteristics of dark matter particles, logician Sonja Smets will research the logical structure of correlated information changes, and chemist Jarl Ivar van der Vlugt will tackle fundamental questions about the activation and conversion of small molecules such as ammonia, carbon dioxide and water during homogeneous catalysis.

The remaining three research projects will be conducted within AMC-UvA. Neurologist Diederik van de Beek will research the genetic factors contributing to meningitis, gastroenterologist Sheila Krishnadath will seek a cure for Barrett's oesophagus (associated with a heightened risk for oesophageal cancer), and virologist Rogier Sanders will focus on developing a vaccine for HIV.

Sociologist Maurice Crul of the UvA has also been awarded an ERC Starting Grant. His research will be conducted at another institution.