ERC Starting Grant for Croce and Dullens
FOM workgroup leader Prof.dr. Roberta Croce and former FOM PhD student Dr. Roel Dullens have both received an ERC Starting Grant. ERC grants are intended to establish or strengthen excellent research teams.
Photosynthesis
The grant of 1.7 million Euros gives Croce the opportunity to investigate molecular mechanisms that influence fluctuating environmental factors on photosynthesis. Only plants, algae and some bacteria can convert energy from sunlight into chemical energy. This way of generating energy is called photosynthesis. Photosynthetic organisms are much more dynamic than we usually think. Indeed, they can quickly adapt to a changing environment. How do these organisms do that? And how does that affect photosynthesis? A better understanding of these processes will help to produce food and biofuels more efficiently in the future. Croce is Professor Biophysics of Photosynthesis at the VU University Amsterdam and was awarded a NWO Vici grant earlier this year.
Crystals
Dullens was awarded 1.5 million Euros for his project 'Impurities in Colloidal Materials - tuning the properties of crystals, powders and glasses', that runs for a period of five years at the University of Oxford. This grant allows him to build up a research team of two PhD students and two postdoctoral research assistents and to buy new state-of-the-art equipment, to investigate the role of impurities on crystallisation and glass formation using colloidal model systems.