It was announced this week that Dr Maria Alcolea is one of 57 new awardees for the European Research Council Synergy Grants.
These grants are part of the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, and are designed to foster collaboration between researchers to pursue new and ground-breaking research.
Dr Alcolea will be working alongside Professor Benjamin Simons (CSCI, Gurdon Institute), Daniel Stange (Technical University of Dresden), and Bon-Kyoung Koo (Institute for Basic Science, Daejoon) on their project, Tracing the origin of clonal pathogenesis. Their project was selected out of 548 proposals, and is the first ERC project ever to include a researcher from a Korean Institute.
This collaborative project incorporates an interdisciplinary programme of work aimed at understanding how, during the initial stages of cancer formation, mutations present in our tissues are able to evade existing barriers protecting us form this devastating disease.
Maria P. Alcolea says, “at ClonEscape, we believe that only by understanding how the mutations synergise/compete with each other and their immediate environment, we will be able to device effective strategies to prevent cancer altogether.”
President of the ERC Professor Maria Leptin says of the awards, 'It is so inspiring to see how the Synergy Grants bring together remarkable researchers from many disciplines, countries and even continents, united by their ambition to tackle difficult research questions. Many of the teams include a researcher based outside Europe, which shows the global and open character of these grants. Congratulations to all the winners – I much look forward to following their progress as they push our boundaries of knowledge.'