King's College London

Three leading researchers from King’s College London have been awarded significant funding from the European Research Council (ERC) to undertake cutting-edge research projects.

Professor Sergi Garcia-Manyes from the Faculty of Natural, Mathematical and Engineering Sciences (NMES) and the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine (FoLSM), Professor Osvaldo Simeone, from NMES and Professor Andrea Cornwall, from the Faculty of Social Science and Public Policy (SSPP), will use the funding to pursue ambitious research that could lead to major scientific breakthroughs.

The European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grants were created to support established scientists with a proven track-record of significant achievements.

The application process for the ERC Advanced Grants is highly competitive and is awarded to leading researchers in their field. The funding, worth in total €721 million, will go to 281 researchers across Europe. Awardees each receive up to €2.5 million over a period of five years.

The ERC Advanced Grants are part of the ERC’s main frontier research grants which are funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.

Since 1 January 2024, UK researchers have been able to participate in Horizon Europe on the same terms as researchers from EU Member States, which means they can lead consortia and have direct access to Horizon Europe funding.

Professor Osvaldo Simeone

Professor Osvaldo Simeone’s project hopes to rethink how AI is deployed in wireless systems to ensure it is not only powerful, but also trustworthy. The project, called ‘CONTRACT’, proposes a solution based on a new statistical foundation for reliably calibrating and monitoring AI models in real time. It builds on cutting-edge statistics to give AI systems a form of “error bars” or built-in checks even when operating under unpredictable conditions. This means that the network can know when the AI’s predictions might be off and adapt accordingly.

Professor Simeone said that: “This project is about turning AI from a reliability risk into a reliability asset. We want to bring formal, mathematical guarantees into systems that people depend on every day. I am very grateful to the ERC for this opportunity.”

Professor Sergi Garcia-Manyes

Professor Garcia-Manyes’s project will study how the mechanochemical properties of proteins directly affect several cellular functions, such as the cell’s ability to propagate mechanical signals to the nucleus and the translocation of proteins across different organelles.

Professor Garcia-Manyes said: “I am thrilled and very honoured to have obtained this ERC award, which will provide my laboratory with the unique opportunity to discover new molecular mechanisms underpinning cellular and tissue mechanobiology. We are very excited to be able to test how our physicochemical experiments on individual molecules can contribute to our fundamental understanding of the biology of the cell”.

Professor Andrea Cornwall

Professor Cornwall’s project TROUBGEN will explore the current ‘trouble with gender’ as it plays out in a number of hotspots around the world, including the UK. It will map the fault-lines of current disputes, examining their origins, trajectories, and implications for international development. Working with verbatim theatre and visual landscapes of meaning, TROUBGEN will create spaces for dialogue, reflection and analysis.

Professor Cornwall says, “I’m very appreciative to the ERC for this exciting opportunity to work with an inter-generational team of scholars, activists and arts practitioners on this complex, unfolding story, with its broader implications for democracy and human rights in these troubling times.”