EUROPEAN RESEARCH COUNCIL
About EUR515 million (£465.5 million) has been awarded by the ERC to the winners of its second Advanced Grants competition. The awards, worth up to EUR3.5 million apiece, are provided to established researchers. UK-based winners in the physical sciences and engineering, and social sciences and humanities are listed below; others will be published in coming weeks.
PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING
Award winner: David O'Hagan
Institution: University of St Andrews
New horizons in organo-fluorine chemistry
Award winner: John Rarity
Institution: University of Bristol
Quantum optics in wavelength-scale structures
Award winner: Peter Sadler
Institution: University of Warwick
Bioinorganic chemistry for the design of new medicines
SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
Award winner: Orazio Attanasio
Institution: University College London
Exiting long-run poverty: the determinants of asset accumulation in developing countries
Award winner: Michael Batty
Institution: University College London
Morphology, energy and climate change in the city
Award winner: Maxine Berg
Institution: University of Warwick
Europe's Asian centuries: trading Eurasia 1600-1830
Award winner: Georgina Born
Institution: University of Cambridge
Music, digitisation, mediation: towards interdisciplinary music studies
Award winner: Nicholas De Lange
Institution: University of Cambridge
Mapping the Jewish communities of the Byzantine Empire
Award winner: Miriam Glucksmann
Institution: University of Essex
Consumption work and societal divisions of labour
Award winner: Engin Isin
Institution: The Open University
Citizenship after Orientalism
Award winner: Martin Jones
Institution: University of Cambridge
Food globalisation in prehistory
Award winner: Ruth Mace
Institution: University College London
The evolution of cultural norms in real-world settings
Award winner: Stephen Shennan
Institution: University College London
Cultural evolution of Neolithic Europe
Award winner: Mark Steedman
Institution: University of Edinburgh
Grammar-based robust natural-language processing
Award winner: John Styles
Institution: University of Hertfordshire
Spinning in the era of the spinning wheel 1400-1800
Award winner: Lorraine Tyler
Institution: University of Cambridge
From perception to conception: how the brain processes meaningful concepts
Award winner: Gill Valentine
Institution: University of Leeds
Living with difference in Europe - making communities out of strangers in an era of super-mobility and super-diversity
NATURAL ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH COUNCIL
Award winner: M. Zubkov
Institution: National Oceanography Centre
Value: £48,639
Who are the ubiquitous, biomass-significant red fluorescent picoplanktonic cells in temperate and polar surface oceans?
Award winner: E. Maltby
Institution: University of Liverpool
Value: £38,0
Investigating the temporal impact of drainage and re-wetting on interactions between microbes, enzyme kinetics and dissolved organic compounds in peat.
IN DETAIL
Award winner: R. van der Wal
Institution: University of Aberdeen
Value: £38,705
Understanding determinants of plant invasiveness: a case study on tree mallow Lavatera arborea
Dr van der Wal and his team will study the invasive nature of Lavatera arborea, a tree mallow that is driving out Scottish puffin colonies. The native Atlantic-Mediterranean plant is thought to have escaped from coastal gardens into the Scottish wilderness, where it has thrived with the help of mild winters and breeding seabirds disturbing vegetation. The researchers on the project will also investigate non-invasive ranges of Lavatera arborea in Cornwall in their search for preventive measures that will help limit further destruction to the environment.