Congratulations to Dr Berta Verd, who was awarded an ERC Starting Grant for her project titled: 'Evolving increased vertebral counts: Developmental mechanisms underpinning phenotypic evolution in the Lake Malawi cichlid radiation', which she calls the COUNTS project.
The European Research Council (ERC) has today announced the award of 494 Starting Gants to young scientists across Europe (each around €1.5 million). The funding supports cutting-edge research and aims to help researchers at the beginning of their careers launch their own projects and form their teams.
Iliana Ivanova, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said:
''The European Commission is proud to support the curiosity and passion of our early-career talent under our Horizon Europe programme. The new ERC Starting Grants winners aim to deepen our understanding of the world. Their creativity is vital to finding solutions to some of the most pressing societal challenges. In this call, I am happy to see one of the highest shares of female grantees to date, a trend that I hope will continue. Congratulations to all''
Using her ERC Starting Grant, Associate Professor Berta Verd aims to explore how developmental processes have evolved to generate diversity in the number of vertebrae, a highly variable trait amongst vertebrates which ranges from as few as ten in some frogs to several hundred in snakes. She will address this question using a highly interdisciplinary approach, combining state-of-the-art experimental embryology, single cell technologies, microscopy, and mathematical modelling in Lake Malawi cichlid fishes, an emergent model system in evolutionary developmental biology studies.
The COUNTS project will advance our fundamental understanding of how phenotypic diversity is generated, with potential far-reaching applications such as predicting how animals evolve in response to climate change or improving organoid design for applications in regenerative medicine.
Associate Professor Berta Verd, says of the award:
''I am very grateful to the many mentors and colleagues that have helped me over the years, but special mention goes out to my brave DPhil students who joined me when I first opened my lab. I also thank my family, in particular my husband Greg and my parents, for their unwavering support.''
About the ERC
The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialisation. The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. . Maria Leptin has been the President of the ERC since November 2021. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion, as part of the Horizon Europe programme, under the responsibility of European Commissioner.
Full details about the awards can be found here: European Research Council awards €780m in grants to emerging science talent across Europe | ERC (europa.eu)
