5 September 2024
The European Research Council (ERC) has announced the award of 494 Starting Grants to young scientists and scholars across Europe. 

Among the winners were two Poles – Piotr Alexandrowicz, PhD and Lukasz Bola, PhD

Piotr Alexandrowicz, PhD from the Faculty of Law and Administration at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, will receive €1.5 million for the PetrIUS project: “Petrification of ius commune through printed paratexts” in which he will study early modern printed legal paratexts. This is the first ERC grant at a law faculty in Poland. The aim of the project is to study the history and function of printed marginalia in the most important ancient legal prints. Last year, he was awarded the Robert Feenstra Prize for the best article published in the leading legal-historical journal Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis. He has also received, among other awards, the Gerda Henkel Stiftung scholarship, and previously also the START scholarship from the Foundation for Polish Science and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education scholarship for outstanding young scientists.

Lukasz Bola, PhD  from the Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, will receive nearly €1.5 million for the BLINDBRAIN project: “Language Processing in Blind Early Visual Cortex? Understanding Limits of Functional Plasticity in Human Brain,” Poland’s first ERC grant in the field of psychology. The project deals with brain plasticity in people blind from birth.
Dr. Lukasz Bola is a recipient of an Ulam NAWA Seal of Excellence grant for his project “The function of the primary visual cortex (V1) in blind individuals.” Previously, he held research internships at the University of Glasgow and Harvard. He is the winner of, among others, the START scholarship from the Foundation for Polish Science, the Prime Minister’s Award for an outstanding doctoral dissertation and the MEiN scholarship for outstanding young scientists.


European Research Council (ERC) grants are prestigious awards given for ground-breaking research in a chosen scientific area. Starting Grants are awarded to researchers who have earned their PhD 2 to 7 years earlier, for projects of up to 5 years. The grants help them set up their first independent research team or programme and achieve research independence.

This year, nearly 3,500 researchers applied in the Starting Grants category, of which less than 500 received funding for their application. Among this group were two individuals affiliated with Polish institutions. Since the program’s inception in 2007, a total of 87 ERC grants of all categories (Starting, Consolidator, Advanced, Synergy, Proof of Concept) have been awarded to Poland.


Source:

 

https://forumakademickie.pl/konkursy/erc-starting-grants-dla-dwoch-badaczy-z-polski/

https://erc.europa.eu/news-events/news/erc-2024-starting-grants-results