Four researchers from Poland won prestigious ERC Advanced Grant. The winners include Prof. Paweł Moskal and Dr hab. Cezary Galewicz from the Jagiellonian University, both NCN Award winners.
The ERC Advanced Grants are the most prestigious funding schemes that give senior researchers the opportunity to pursue ambitious projects often leading to major scientific breakthroughs. Researchers with significant research achievements can win funding of up to € 2.5 million for their research projects performed over a period of up to 5 years.
The winning applicants of the latest edition include two NCN Award winners.
Exotic Positronium Atom
Prof. Paweł Moskal from the Faculty of Physics, Astronomy, and Applied Computer Science, Jagiellonian University received funding for his project “Can tissue oxidation be sensed by positronium?” He will work on developing a method for non-invasive assessment of hypoxia (oxygen deficiency in tissues) which is one of the major challenges in modern medical imaging. Prof. Moskal will focus on creating a novel method for measuring the level of oxygen concentration in tissues by measuring photons from positronium annihilation inside cells. The exotic positronium atom (a bound state of an electron and a positron) is produced in the human body during diagnosis performed by positron emission tomography (PET).
Voices from the Deep South
Prof. Cezary Galewicz from the Faculty of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University will carry out the project „Voices from the Deep South: the rise of Pattu song cultures of South Asia.” The project offers a completely new perspective on the history of song cultures in South Asia, with a particular focus on southern India. It aims to create a digital archive of songs, and to study how regional song cultures impacted communities effectively resisting high cultures associated with literary languages of prestige, but also inspiring and transforming them. The project's tasks will include 'historical mapping' of the most important regional cultures of this kind, their typologisation, and articulating mutual relationships and differences. Prof. Galewicz will try to completely reconfigure the historical understanding of the coexistence of high literary cultures and those that were termed 'folk' or 'subordinate' with possible consequences for research in many other regions.
More on research performed by Prof. Paweł Moskal and Prof. Cezary Galewicz
ERC Advanced Grants 2024
2,534 funding proposals were submitted to the latest edition of the ERC Advanced Grant, of which over 11 percent were recommended for funding. The total grants of over €721 million will go to 281 researchers from 23 EU Member States and associated countries.
Thirteen researchers working in Poland have received the ERC Advanced Grants, including Grażyna Jurkowlaniec, Emanuel Gull and Thomas Skotnicki in April 2024 and Karol Życzkowski in June 2024.