Dr Nicola Fletcher with the world’s first commercially available laboratory scale soft x-ray microscope. Image: Jason Clarke Photography
This year’s grant winners represent the highest proportion of women since the scheme began.
57 research groups, including two from Ireland, will receive a combined €571m under the the latest round of ERC Synergy Grants to address complex scientific issues.
Part of EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, this funding will support 201 researchers from more than 180 universities and research centres based in Europe and beyond.
Nearly 32pc of the researchers from winning projects this year are women – including both the grant winners from Ireland – marking their highest proportion in this programme since the scheme began. Additionally, six research teams this year are composed entirely of women.
Scattering amplitudes and extreme x-ray imaging
Trinity College Dublin’s Dr Ruth Britto and University College Dublin’s (UCD) Dr Nicola Fletcher represent Ireland as grant winners this year.
Theoretical physicist Britto will collaborate with researchers from the University of Oxford, the Max Planck Society and Uppsala University in Sweden on a project that looks into the mathematics of scattering amplitudes – mathematical functions characterising the production of elementary particles.
While Dr Nicola Fletcher will develop and implement an innovative x-ray technology for tissue biopsies in a €6m collaborative project called NanoX that aims to understand the pathophysiology of hepatitis E infections.
For the project, Fletcher will work with Dr Venera Weinhardt at the University of Heidelberg in Germany and Prof Maria Harkiolaki at the UK’s national synchrotron light source science facility, Diamond Light Source Limited.
Soft x-ray microscopy is a new imaging technique allowing the visualisation of cells in great detail, but it has not yet been applied to imaging whole tissues.
According to UCD, NanoX will develop new techniques that can image tissue microbiopsies, providing new ways to characterise, diagnose, and treat a range of diseases in any species at a level of detail.
Fletcher, an Ad Astra fellow at the UCD School of Veterinary Medicine and a fellow of UCD Conway Institute said that this project fits “perfectly within One Health”, an approach to health that unifies the health of people, animals and the environment, adding that it will “benefit all species”.
“The UCD Conway Institute is home to the world’s first commercially available laboratory scale soft x-ray microscope, built and designed by SiriusXT Ltd,” she said.
Together with collaborators, Fletcher said, “we have the state-of-the-art facilities we need to develop new ways to image tissue biopsies in exquisite detail”.
“I am confident that this project will deliver new ways to diagnose and treat a wide range of diseases in humans and animals.”
This year’s funding brings Ireland’s ERC Synergy participation to six grants in total – of which four of the grantees are from UCD.
Last year, two UCD researchers – Prof Emma Teeling and Dr Claire Harnett – were awarded ERC Synergy grants for their research among a total of 37 teams across Europe.
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