EUROPEAN RESEARCH COUNCIL
The European Research Council has announced the winners of its Advanced Grants in life sciences. The awards are worth up to EUR2.5 million (?1.95 million), but they can rise to EUR3.5 million in exceptional circumstances. The 18 UK-based researchers, from a total of 78 winners, are listed below.
Award winner: David Baulcombe
Institution: University of Cambridge
RNA silencing in regulation and evolution
Award winner: Matteo Carandini
Institution: University College London
Computations by neurons and populations in visual cortex
Award winner: Caroline Dean
Institution: John Innes Centre
Dissection of environmentally mediated epigenetic silencing
Award winner: John Endler
Institution: University of Exeter
Using sensory biology and environmental conditions to predict the direction of evolution
Award winner: Jeremy Martin Henley
Institution: University of Bristol
Mechanisms and consequences of synaptic SUMOylation in health and disease
Award winner: Sebastian Lennox Johnston
Institution: Imperial College London
Human and mouse models of rhinovirus-induced acute asthma exacerbations
Award winner: Jonathan Jones
Institution: Sainsbury Laboratory
Genomics and effectoromics to understand defence suppression and disease resistance in Arabidopsis-Albugo candida interactions
Award winner: Dimitri Michael Kullmann
Institution: University College London
Long-term synaptic plasticity in interneurons: mechanisms and computational significance
Award winner: Kevin Neville Laland
Institution: University of St Andrews
The evolution of culture
Award winner: Nicholas Mazarakis
Institution: Imperial College London
Improved retrograde lentiviral vectors for gene therapy in motor neuron diseases
Award winner: Vincent Savolainen
Institution: Imperial College London
Understanding the origin of species: ecological genomics and transcriptomics on oceanic islands
Award winner: Michael David Schneider
Institution: Imperial College London
Cardiac death and regeneration
Award winner: Christopher Joseph Schofield
Institution: University of Oxford
Molecular mechanism of oxygen sensing by enzymes
Award winner: Brigitta Stockinger
Institution: Medical Research Council
The influence of Aryl hydrocarbon receptor ligands on protective and pathological immune responses
Award winner: Alan Tunnacliffe
Institution: University of Cambridge
Surviving the dry state: engineering a desiccation-tolerant mammalian cell
Award winner: Michael David Tyers
Institution: University of Edinburgh
Systematic chemical genetic interrogation of biological networks
Award winner: Fritz Vollrath
Institution: University of Oxford
Skills as biomimetic ideals for polymers
Award winner: Stuart West
Institution: University of Edinburgh
Evolutionary explanations for co-operation: microbes to humans
THE BRITISH ACADEMY
Two international awards have been made through a collaborative scheme that enables research to be carried out by international partners. The funding, which totals ?290,000, is to be provided over a three-year period. The successful projects are:
Project name: Islam, trade and politics across the Indian Ocean: interaction between South-East Asia and Turkey and the Ottoman Empire, 16th to the 20th centuries
Institutions: University of Chichester, among others
Value: ?150,000
Project name: Clerical authority in Shiite Islam: culture and learning in the seminaries of Iraq and Iran
Institutions: The universities of Cambridge, Durham, Exeter, Oxford and St Andrews, among others
Value: ?140,000.