Two Principal Investigators of LS4FUTURE Were Awarded with ERC Starting Grant 

Ilana Gabanyi and Giulia Ghedini, principal investigators at the Gulbenkian Science Institute (IGC), have each been awarded a Starting Grant of €1.5-1.9M by the European Research Council (ERC) to build their projects and teams over the next five years as they begin their careers.

The project led by Giulia Ghedini will determine how metabolic responses to competitors influence the productivity and diversity of communities, using marine phytoplankton as a model laboratory system. As metabolic responses to species interactions modulate the physiology and evolution of all organisms, project results will lead to an increased knowledge of biological systems.

​Ilana Gabanyi‘s award-winning project will explore the interactions between gut-bacterial signals and brain neurons, which may be sex- and age-dependent. Project findings may lead to new therapeutic approaches for neurological diseases with gender-specific prevalence and microbiota-associated susceptibility, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

For 2023, the ERC awarded 400 Starting Grants (totalling €628M) from 2,696 proposals to support cutting-edge research in a wide range of scientific fields. In the Life Sciences field, 3 Starting Grants were attributed to Portugal, totalling over €5M.