Researchers at Dublin universities have been selected to take part in two international projects funded by the EU’s Horizon Programme.
The two projects involving Irish universities will receive around €16 million in European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grants.
ERC Synergy Grants support projects carried out by a group of two to four individual researchers who can employ any nationality as team members. They involve collaborations between different universities, institutes and companies.
University College Dublin (UCD) together with the University of Heidelberg and British company, Diamond Light Source, will use nanoscale X-ray tissue imaging to try to better understand the “pathophysiology” of hepatitis E infections.
Nanoscale imaging uses X-ray scanning to build up 3D images of biological samples. It is used to get high resolution detail down to a submicron level. Diamond Light Source based at the Harwell in Oxfordshire has expertise in the technology.
UCD says the technique could revolutionise clinical diagnostics and research, providing new ways to characterise, diagnose and treat a range of diseases.
“Soft x-ray microscopy is a novel, exciting imaging technique which allows scientists to visualise cells in exquisite detail, but it has yet to be applied to imaging whole tissues.”
Meanwhile Trinity College Dublin together with the University of Oxford, Uppsala University in Sweden and the Max Planck Society in Germany will research the “mathematics of scattering amplitudes”.
Scattering amplitudes are a way of measuring the interactions between elementary particles and are fundamental to predicting high-energy ‘colliders’, according to scientists.
Professor Ruth Britto at Trinity’s School of Mathematics says she has spent years probing the structure of scattering amplitudes.
“I’ve made progress by relying on the mathematics of well-known functions, but we’ve reached the point where it’s clear that we need to develop new mathematics to meet the needs of current and future experiments.
Based on our common recognition of an underlying hidden geometry in scattering amplitudes, I am teaming up with colleagues who can develop wholly new mathematical concepts and bring insights from string theory.”
In total, the ERC has awarded 57 research groups a total of €571 million to address some of the most complex scientific problems.
The ERC says the grants will “foster collaboration between outstanding researchers, enabling them to combine their expertise, knowledge and resources to push the boundaries of scientific discovery.”
The funding is part of the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.