Five LMU researchers awarded ERC grants
In the latest round of applications for European Research Council (ERC) grants, five of the coveted Starting Grants have gone to researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich, Germany.
Dr Daniel Braun (Faculty of Medicine) is concerned with the mechanisms that underlie our ability to move about in the world around us, and particularly the interactions between sensory perception and the adaptation of movement to the nature of the surroundings in which we happen to find ourselves. The aim of his ERC project is to develop a new mathematical framework for the description of movements and motion sequences.
The Faculty of History and the Arts’s Dr Chiara Franceschini is a specialist in Renaissance art. Her ERC project (The Normativity of Sacred Images in Early Modern Europe (SACRIMA)) plans to investigate the interactions between artistic developments and shifts in the significance of religious images in Europe between 1450 and 1650. The goal is to elucidate the changing relationships between art, religion and geography during these two centuries and contribute to our understanding of cultural integration in early modern Europe.
Dr Ralf Jungmann (Faculty of Physics) is devoted to the development of innovative imaging techniques for biomedical applications based on the use of fluorescence microscopy and markers that exploit the versatility of DNA nanotechnology. His ERC project (From Tissues to Single Molecules: High Content in Situ Super-Resolution Imaging with DNA-PAINT) plans to extend the application of super-resolution imaging into hitherto inaccessible territory.
Developmental psychologist Professor Markus Paulus’s (Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences) ERC project (Unravelling the moral self) is designed to tease out the origins of moral behaviour. He intends to focus on the development of the individual’s self-perception as a moral person and its role in fostering pro-social behaviour, which promises to provide new insights relevant to current issues in moral education.
The Faculty for the Study of Culture’s Dr Philipp Stockhammer’s ERC project intends to trace the impact of intercultural contacts on the development of Eastern Mediterranean cuisines during the second millennium BCE. Among other issues, he wants to know how the increasingly close links between the various regions of the Eastern Mediterranean affected local food practices, and when and how different exotic ingredients were adopted by different societies.
LMU now offers the option of appointment to a tenure track professorship to successful applicants for ERC Starting Grants, each of which are worth some €1.5m.
