The project led by Noemi Rocco (IFIC), who will investigate the properties of neutrinos, and and the one led by Andrea González-Montoro (I3M), who will develop a scanner for pediatric patients, will receive these grants, which entail 1.5 million euros of funding for each project for five years. This economic contribution is part of the European Union's Horizon Europe program
Two research projects of the Superior Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in the Valencian Community, an agency of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU), have obtained Starting Grants from the European Research Council (ERC). The projects are led by researchers Andrea González-Montoro, from the Institute of Instrumentation for Molecular Imaging (I3M, CSIC - Polytechnic University of Valencia), and Noemi Rocco, from the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC), located at the University of Valencia Science Park. The grants involve 1.5 million euros of funding for each project over the next five years. This economic contribution is part of the European Union's Horizon Europe program.
The Starting Grant program is intended to support the creation of groups whose principal investigator has between two and seven years of postdoctoral experience and whose research activity is at the frontier of knowledge. The scientific personnel can be from any country in the world as long as they carry out their work in one of the member states of the European Union or associated countries. In the current edition, the ERC has awarded a total funding of 780 million euros for some 500 projects ranging from life sciences and physical sciences to social sciences and humanities. These projects will be carried out in 24 EU countries. Spain, with 33 projects, ranks sixth among the countries receiving aid.
Empowering early-career researchers is one of the core missions of the ERC,” said Maria Leptin, ERC President. "I am particularly pleased to welcome back researchers from the UK to the ERC. They have been sorely missed in recent years. With fifty grants awarded to UK-based researchers, this influx is positive for the wider research community.”
“The European Commission is proud to support the curiosity and passion of our young talents under our Horizon Europe program. The new ERC Starting Grant recipients aim to deepen our understanding of the world. Their creativity is vital to finding solutions to some of the most pressing societal challenges,” said Iliana Ivanova, EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth. “In this call, I am pleased to see one of the highest percentages of female beneficiaries to date, a trend I hope will continue,” concluded Ivanova.
Neutrino oscillation
Neutrino oscillation experiments are entering a new era of precision, using cutting-edge technologies and capabilities to provide unprecedented insight into the nature of the universe. Neutrino-nucleus cross sections play a key role in reconstructing the energy of the oscillated flux and in extracting the oscillation parameters. Therefore, an accurate understanding of these cross sections is critical to the success of these experiments. The NUQNET project led by Noemi Rocco, from Fermilab Laboratory (USA) whose ERC was applied for through the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC, CSIC-UV), aims to create an innovative theoretical framework based on artificial neural networks to quantitatively describe neutrino-nucleus interactions over the entire broad energy spectrum relevant to neutrino oscillations experiments.
What sets this project apart is the resulting theoretical model that will amplify the discovery potential of oscillation experiments such as the Hyper-Kamiokande and Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) projects. “This project, which has a multidisciplinary approach, will have a profound impact from both a nuclear physics and particle physics point of view. By taking advantage of the innovative quantum states of artificial neural networks, we will describe nuclei relevant to neutrino accelerator experiments with unprecedented accuracy,” says the researcher.
A scanner for pediatric patients
Positron emission tomography (PET) devices allow molecular imaging of organs and metabolic processes in the human body using radiopharmaceuticals. These devices are used to monitor diseases such as cancer. However, current PET scanners are not optimized for pediatric patients because they cannot obtain full body images, their resolution prevents visualization of small lesions and their lower sensitivity requires injecting high doses of radiopharmaceuticals, which implies exposing the patient to higher doses of radiation.
To overcome these limitations, which compromise the diagnosis and prognosis of pediatric patients, Andrea González-Montoro, a researcher at the Institute of Instrumentation for Molecular Imaging (I3M, CSIC-UPV), proposes to develop a novel PET scanner adapted to pediatric requirements. “The Phoenix system will have a length of 70 cm to cover all the organs of children simultaneously, will combine BGO scintillator crystals, silicon detectors and a novel electronics, nonexistent to date. This will achieve sensitivities 30 times higher than current PET scintillators and a uniform spatial resolution of less than three millimeters. The successful construction of the Phoenix equipment will represent a technological breakthrough with a consequent improvement in the diagnosis and prognosis of numerous childhood diseases,” explains the scientist.
Other Starting Grant projects
In addition to the I3M and IFIC projects that have obtained a Starting Grant, the ERC has also awarded five other grants to CSIC research projects in centers in the rest of the country. The selected projects are led by Carlos Anerillas, researcher at the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center (CBM, CSIC - Autonomous University of Madrid); Cristina Viéitez, scientist at the Institute of Functional Biology and Genomics (IBFG, CSIC - University of Salamanca); Laia Josa-Culleré, researcher at the Institute of Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia (IQAC-CSIC), Marta Umbert, researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC), and Rafael Luque, scientist at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC).