ERC Starting Grants: success for ETH researchers
Nine researchers from ETH Zurich have just been awarded Starting Grants from the European Research Council (ERC). This is a positive signal for Zurich as a research location.
In brief
- The European Research Council supports researchers at the beginning of their careers with Starting Grants.
- A total of 13.5 million Swiss francs of this EU funding will now go to nine ETH researchers.
- 18.4 percent of all ETH applications for these grants are successful, more than the European average.
A proud moment for ETH Zurich – nine scientists from various disciplines have just been awarded a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). This prestigious funding opportunity enables researchers at the beginning of their careers to set up a research group and implement new ideas.
A wide range of disciplines, from material sciences to physics to the humanities, are represented in the projects. The grants will see ETH receive around CHF 13.5 million in funding. One of the projects (Serina Robinson) will be led by Eawag.
18 percent of ETH applications were successful
The ETH researchers also achieved above-average success when compared to Europe as a whole. Of the 49 ETH applications submitted, 16 (32 percent) reached the second evaluation stage, nine of which will now benefit from the funding. Two projects are on the reserve list and could still be funded. This puts the success rate for ETH applications at 18.4 percent. The European average is usually between 10 and 15 percent.
The award is not only a personal success for the researchers, but also proof that ETH researchers continue to be competitive on the European stage. In years gone by, researchers at Swiss universities were excluded from most ERC calls for proposals due to the failed framework agreement with the EU. They were only able to apply for national personal grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation that were of a similar amount. But there was no opportunity to compare their scientific expertise with other European researchers.
Thanks to a transitional arrangement, researchers at Swiss universities have been considered beneficiaries since the beginning of 2025 and can once again directly apply for EU funding. The Starting Grant projects reviewed by the ERC are financed from the joint EU fund.
An appeal to politicians
“I’m delighted that our young researchers have proved so successful,” says Annette Oxenius, Vice President for Research at ETH Zurich. However, she stresses that this cannot hide the fact that European research funding for academics working in Switzerland is still not secure.
“The current transitional arrangement is a step forward, but it is not a substitute for full associate membership of the European research program Horizon Europe,” Oxenius points out. Switzerland must therefore once again become a fully fledged partner in the European Research Area. “This is the only way to ensure that our universities remain competitive in the long term.”
She therefore calls on Swiss politicians to stabilise bilateral relations with the EU and pave the way for long-term participation in Horizon Europe. “Scientific excellence knows no borders,” says the Vice President for Research.
The projects at a glance:
Particle physicist Thea Klaeboe Aarrestad conducts research at CERN in Geneva, where she works on the Large Hadron Collider and its particle detector CMS – the device used to discover the Higgs boson. Every second, 40 million particle pairs collide inside the detector, generating about 40 terabytes of raw data. Because this amount of data is far too large to store and analyse, algorithms sort out what is physically uninteresting within millionths of a second. 99 percent of the raw data is deleted immediately. In her ERC project, Aarrestad is developing methods to analyse this data before it is discarded. She relies on ultra-fast artificial intelligence that analyses every collision in real time. These systems do not rely on pre-set filters and can also detect unexpected patterns that are overlooked by conventional methods. The approach could help to greatly improve the search for new, previously unknown physics – and exploit the full potential of the CMS detector.
Hedan Bai, a Professor of Robotic Materials aims to develop novel materials in her ERC project that contain numerous controllable actuator elements. These materials resemble human muscle in both structure and function. To individually control the densely packed drive elements in the artificial muscle, Bai relies on light’s broad spectrum. She uses light to stimulate the "muscles," resulting in exceptional drive capacity. This robotic material offers a wide range of applications, such as components for innovative, physically intelligent machines, in the development of robots that explore hazardous environments, or robots used in surgical settings.
Physicist Alexander Dikopoltsev works in the field of photonics and investigates how light and matter interact. He investigates novel forms of laser frequency combs. This is light consisting of many – typically ten to several million– individual, precisely tuned wavelengths. It differs fundamentally from sunlight, which contains a continuum of colours and wavelengths. Currently, large and complex setups are required to generate such frequency combs. In his ERC project, Dikopoltsev aims to generate them on tiny chips. To achieve stable and easily controllable frequency combs, he will use something known as liquid-like light. With the help of radio waves, he can precisely control which wavelengths the generated light contains. Applications include optical data transmission, LIDAR mapping and spectroscopy methods for medical diagnostics, materials testing and environmental analysis.
Political economist Lukas Fesenfeld is a Senior Researcher and Lecturer in climate and technology policy. His work examines how political, economic, and technological changes influence one another and shape the design of climate policies and innovation. In his ERC project, Fesenfeld investigates why certain low-carbon innovations, such as electric vehicles or wind turbines, spark intense political debate, while other technologies attract little attention. To this end, he compares 20 key low-emission technologies across industrialised and emerging economies. Using methods from machine learning, experiments, statistical data analysis, and case studies, he analyses which technological characteristics in different political systems lead to higher or lower levels of conflict. The aim is to better understand how these differences affect climate policy, the diffusion of new technologies, and the development of industrial sectors. The insights gained aim to equip decision-makers with a robust foundation for identifying political risks early on and for devising context-specific strategies that can accelerate the adoption of low-emission technologies and deliver effective emissions reductions.
In his ERC project, geophysicist Thomas Hudson is combining seismology and glaciology in to better understand how quickly glaciers are melting and how significantly they contribute to sea level rise. Modern computer models and satellites already provide extensive data about glacier surfaces. However, what happens beneath the ice remains largely unknown. Using innovative seismic instruments - including fibre optic sensors and small measuring stations—Hudson aims to detect movements and fractures within the glaciers. The goal is to determine how firmly the ice is bonded to the subsurface and how severely entire glaciers are damaged internally. Additionally, Hudson wants to use seismic signals to draw conclusions about other geological processes. These insights are intended to improve predictions of sea level rise. Beyond that, the new methods could also be applied in geothermal energy production or in monitoring CO? storage sites.
Serina Robinson, currently a group leader at Eawag and lecturer at ETH Zurich, researches how microbes break down chemical contaminants in the environment and how one can predict the activity of microbial enzymes. In her ERC project, which she will do jointly between Eawag and ETH Zurich, she will carry out laboratory experiments and computational modelling to investigate how microbial enzymes bind to persistent pollutants, known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Enzymatic binding is essential for new approaches to detect and partially transform these long-lasting and toxic pollutants, also called “forever chemicals”. As emerging global awareness of PFAS drives the need for monitoring methods, Robinson seeks to develop easy-to-deploy analytical tools and biotechnological solutions to eliminate these harmful substances and protect humans and the environment.
Outi Supponen is an assistant professor at the Institute of Fluid Dynamics and is investigating, among other things, how the interface of tiny gas-filled bubbles moves. In her ERC project, she aims to investigate how so-called cavitation bubbles form and how they interact with their environment. These are gas bubbles that contract violently and expand abruptly in liquids when exposed to strong sound waves. Such bubbles can temporarily open cells to allow drugs to enter, or destroy tissue and solid structures such as kidney stones. To make these processes visible, Supponen uses ultra-fast video and fluorescence microscopy, X-ray imaging and sound measurements. The findings could help make sound wave treatments more targeted, safer and more effective – for example, in the treatment of brain diseases, tumours, blood clots, infections or kidney stones.
Physicist Konrad Viebahn aims to develop a quantum computer based on ultra-cold atoms. Ultra-cold means that he cools the atoms to extremely low temperatures, just a few millionths of a degree above absolute zero. Viebahn moves the atoms using optical lattices – dynamical patterns generated by lasers. He can perform computing operations by bringing two atoms to exactly the same location and allowing them to interact with each other in a quantum mechanical way. Compared to many other quantum computer approaches, Viebahn's approach has the advantage that it can be easily scaled up: it may one day be possible to use millions of ultra-cold atoms for computing.
ETH professor Siyu Tang is researching and developing advanced computer vision models that enable machines to perceive and understand human movements and activities in three dimensions.
In her ERC project, she focuses on creating algorithmic foundations for a unified, multimodal vision model designed to understand dynamic scenes and human interactions in 3D, integrating visual and multimodal data to build a comprehensive picture of situations and interactions.
The model is intended to contribute to new AI systems in the fields of driving, robotics, healthcare, and augmented reality, and to improve interaction between humans and AI.