Four early career researchers at UCL have been awarded prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants to support their innovative research in linguistics, mathematics, climate change and neuroscience.
A total of 478 academics from 25 countries and dozens of international universities have been selected this year to receive funding from the ERC. The winners will share a total pot of ¤761million (£659 million), with each Starting Grant recipient receiving ¤1.5 million (£1.3 million) for a period of up to five years, tough further funds can be awarded under certain circumstances.
These grants will be used for innovative research spanning a range of subjects, including physical sciences and engineering, life sciences, and social sciences and humanities. The grants aim to provide career-enhancing opportunities to academics at the beginning of their research careers.
The UK is fully associated to Horizon Europe and UCL researchers can participate in and lead projects across the programme. Participation in the EU research framework programmes is a springboard to productive partnerships across the world - strengthening the influence and impact of UK research.
The four recipients from UCL are:
- Dr Tobias Ruttenauer (UCL Institute of Education) for his project, SOCIO-CLIMP which will examine the socio-demographic inequality in climate change impacts across Europe, offering insights into social disparities related to climate change.
- Dr Kate Rowley (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences) for her project TactileLang, which aims to gain new insights into language processing and change by investigating tactile sign language using neuroimaging, exploring whether areas of the brain used for processing spoken and visual sign languages are also used for tactile sign language processing.
- Dr Jonathan Lezmy (UCL Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology), for his project RanvierNodes-WMUnits, which will investigate how electrical signals are regulated in the brain’s white matter which transmit signals across the brain.
- Dr Mikhail Karpukhin (UCL Mathematics) for his project EOaMS, which will explore the surprising connections between analytic measurements, called spectra, and the shapes-or geometry-of different objects.
Dr Tobias Ruttenauer said: "I’m absolutely thrilled to receive the ERC Starting Grant. It’s a tremendous opportunity to deepen our understanding of how climate change and environmental hazards affect people differently across Europe."
Dr Kate Rowley said: "I’m delighted to have been awarded this substantial ERC research grant to explore communication in deafblind individuals. For me, research is about driving meaningful change, and I hope this project will contribute to building systems that foster autonomy and access, empowering deafblind people to participate more fully in society."
Dr Jonathan Lezmy said: "I am delighted to have been awarded an ERC Starting Grant to study the impact of nodes of Ranvier on axon activity in the white matter. This part of the brain has so far received little attention when it comes to understanding how the brain processes information. It is a great opportunity to implement new ideas and approaches that will hopefully contribute to deepening our knowledge in neuroscience"
Dr Mikhail Karpukhin said: "It brings me great joy to see so many aspiring young mathematicians dedicating their efforts to this exciting and relatively new discipline. This award is both a meaningful recognition from the mathematical community and a profound source of inspiration. It will enable me to deepen my research and, more importantly, to invest time and resources into advancing the field by training and mentoring the next generation of researchers."
The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research and is part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme. 2025’s competition attracted 3,928 proposals, with just over 12% of the proposals being funded. The ERC projects that these awards will generate an estimated 3,000 jobs within the teams of the new grantees.
Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, said: "Among the winners in this new round of EU funding are researchers of 51 nationalities. They will be advancing knowledge across a wide range of scientific fields, including cancer, mental health and quantum science. We see leading scientists coming to Europe with these new grants, and many choosing to remain here thanks to this support. This demonstrates Europe’s potential to attract and keep top scientific talent."
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