The diverse projects include work to ensure peatland is fairly managed and conserved, developing a new technique for studying specific proteins within human cells, and investigating the neurological mechanisms involved in weighing up different attributes when making decisions.
Dr Naomi Millner, Associate Professor in Human Geography, will receive an ERC Consolidator Grant worth £1.8m to develop PEATSENSE – a project designed to help ensure environmental and local community needs are incorporated into decision-making related to the management and conservation of peatland.
Recent discoveries have presented an important ecological challenge; although peatlands only cover 3-4% of the earth’s surface, they hold 33% of its carbon reserves. PEATSENSE will primarily focus on Latin America, where the extent of peatland has only recently become evident.
Many proposals for incorporating peatlands into global climate mitigation strategies have focused on measuring carbon to the exclusion of the rich diversity of ecological and socio-cultural relationships that sustain them. This can lead to policies that sideline land and access rights, cultural traditions, and livelihoods, while favouring the interests of private investors and multinational corporations.
The PEATSENSE social science project will investigate how local and indigenous environmental knowledge can be valued alongside scientific expertise to better understand the causes of peatland degradation and to design fairer conservation strategies that are inclusive and equitable.
Dr Millner said: “I'm delighted that PEATSENSE will be funded by the ERC as I believe it has real potential to impact on the ways global climate mitigation strategies are taking shape in biodiverse peatlands around the world. To address the climate crisis, we need approaches to conservation that work well for communities who have long inhabited and managed biodiverse-rich landscapes and not just for big business. This project is designed not only to understand, but to enact, more inclusive alternatives.”
Dr Thom Sharp, Associate Professor of Biochemistry, has been awarded £1.6m to continue developing a new method for finding specific proteins within human cells that could pave the way for cutting-edge immunotherapeutics to target hard-to-treat diseases such as autoimmune disorders, lymphomas and leukaemia.
Currently if researchers studying structural biology want to study protein functions, they need to remove the protein from its native context using a technique called Cryo-electron tomography – however finding a specific protein in a human cell is akin to searching for a needle in a haystack 50m tall. Also, by removing the protein scientists lose the in situ information.
Dr Sharp and his team are working on a new technique to solve these problems. By combining super-resolution light microscopy on sample prepared for cryoET they can locate specific proteins within whole cells. The technique is known as super-resolution cryo-correlative light and electron microscopy, or SRcryoCLEM. It will enable researchers to locate and study specific proteins in unprecedented detail, aiding in the development of next-generation therapeutics.
Dr Sharp said: “I am thrilled to be awarded this grant – the shape of proteins dictates their function, and this proposal will allow us to perfect a broadly-applicable method to see these protein shapes inside our cells. My lab are using this new technique to understand how our immune system protects us, but also why it sometimes doesn’t behave as it should. We need this knowledge to design and develop new medicines to fight infections, autoimmune diseases and cancers.”
And Dr Konstantinos Tsetsos, Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychological Science, has been awarded £1.7m to continue research into how humans process information when making decisions.
The ERC Consolidator Grant will fund a study into the dynamics of attribute weighting when making choices, and in particular what are the mechanisms we use in daily decisions involving multiattribute tradeoffs. For example how much flavour do we sacrifice in pursuit of a healthier food option? Or how many extra minutes of commuting are we willing to sacrifice in order to make a more sustainable transport choice?
Dr Tsetsos said: “Every day, we make decisions by balancing competing factors like health, effort, and financial reward. However, the neural processes that determine the relative importance of these factors remain poorly understood.
“In this project, we will use advanced neuroimaging techniques to shed light on these mechanisms, which will enable us to understand, at a deeper mechanistic level, what promotes preference stability and what drives preference change. Insights from this project will be valuable to clinicians seeking to understand pathological preference variability or persistence; and to policy makers probing whether specific consumer tradeoffs are stable or plastic.”
The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded its Consolidator Grants to 328 researchers. These grants, totalling €678 million, aim to support outstanding scientists and scholars as they establish their independent research teams and develop their most promising scientific ideas. The funding is provided through the EU’s Horizon Europe programme.
The grants will support scientific projects spanning all disciplines of research from engineering to life sciences to humanities. For example, better understanding of what influences positive societal responses to immigrants; using AI to improve firefighting strategies - with realistic 3D images and physical simulations; and analysing how the “losing” voters of a democratically conducted election can come to accept their loss.