A professor and two researchers from the Aix-Marseille campus have been awarded an “ERC Advanced” grant supported by the European Research Council (ERC). These projects—which receive an average of €3.5 million in funding over five years—are among the most prestigious and selective in European research. They recognize established scientists whose work has demonstrated a major impact in their discipline and whose projects open up new frontiers of knowledge.
With three grantees selected in this particularly competitive call—which had a success rate of 13% at the Aix-Marseille site (compared to 10% at the European level)—Aix-Marseille reaffirms its position among Europe’s leading research hubs. This result also attests to the quality of the support provided to researchers by the Mission Europe for Research (MER) and by CERCle, the ERC Club at the Aix-Marseille campus.
A Recipient at Aix-Marseille University
Pascal Belin, a professor at Aix-Marseille University and a member of the Timone Institute of Neurosciences (INT), has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for his project “EVOICE – Evolution of Neuronal Voice Coding in Primates.”
Voices are among the richest social signals, not only in humans but also in other primates. EVOICE will use electrophysiology and computational models to characterize how neurons in the auditory cortex represent the voice and how they have evolved in humans.
“With EVOICE, we will move from brain localization to the computational mechanisms that make primates experts in voice,” says Professor Pascal Belin, the project leader.
This distinction marks a new milestone in the researcher’s career; he is already the recipient of a first ERC Advanced Grant (COVOPRIM) and coordinator of the European doctoral network VoCS.
In addition, two other researchers affiliated with a unit at the site have been selected by the ERC for the first time.
Two other awardees from the Aix-Marseille site
Juan Reguera, an Inserm researcher at the Laboratory of Architecture and Function of Biological Macromolecules (AFMB), has been awarded funding for his project “CHICKO – Decoding the Sequential Program of Chikungunya Virus Infection, ” which aims to better understand the molecular mechanisms of chikungunya virus infection.
Eric Potma, a CNRS researcher set to join the Fresnel Institute, has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for his project “MetaCARS – Observing and Identifying Individual Molecules at Ultrahigh Speeds, ” dedicated to developing new approaches to ultra-high-speed molecular imaging.
With three new awardees from this call once again this year, the Aix-Marseille site reaffirms its position among Europe’s top-performing research centers and its ability to translate scientific excellence into success in the most selective international competitions.
