Professors Vikram Deshpande and Rodolphe Sepulchre are among nine Cambridge researchers who have won Advanced Grants awarded by the European Research Council (ERC). This is the greatest number of grants won by a UK institution in the 2021 round of funding.
This funding will allow our grantees to pursue innovative ambitious research projects at the cutting edge of their disciplines and their success reminds us of the greatly valued contribution of ERC funding programmes to our research environment.
Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith
Advanced Grants are awarded to leading researchers who are established in their field and have a recognised track record of achievements.
Vikram Deshpande, Professor of Materials Engineering, and Fellow of Pembroke College, will pursue the research project titled Graph-based Learning and design of Advanced Mechanical Metamaterials (GLAMM).
"Additive manufacturing has opened the possibility for the creation of metamaterials with previously unattainable properties,” he said. "We will exploit graph-based generative machine learning models to open-up the vast untapped design space of topologically complex metamaterials. The project will thereby lay the scientific foundations for new engineering material designs and solutions.”
Professor Deshpande added: “I view this award as a testament to the creativity of my group that has been working on related areas for a few years now. We are very much looking forward to exploiting the opportunity provided by this ERC grant to make significant breakthroughs.”
Rodolphe Sepulchre, Professor of Engineering, Control Group, will pursue the research project titled Spiking Control Systems: an algorithmic theory for control design of physical event-based systems (SpikyControl).
“Spikes and rhythms organise control and communication in the animal world, in contrast to the bits and clocks of digital technology. Spiking control systems aim at imitating the spiking nature of animal computation, combining the adaptation of analogue physical systems and the reliability of digital automata,” he said.
“The project will explore novel control strategies to interconnect event-based sensors and actuators and will test them both in electrophysiological and electronic environments. Spiking control systems could enable an entirely novel generation of brain-inspired functionalities in machine intelligence and in neural interfaces.”
Professor Sepulchre added: “ERC is unique in encouraging researchers to venture into unchartered territories. I feel privileged that it will fund my research for the next five years.”
Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, said: “Each of the awardees has made outstanding contributions to their field and the ERC funding they have secured is testament to this.
“This funding will allow our grantees to pursue innovative ambitious research projects at the cutting edge of their disciplines and their success reminds us of the greatly valued contribution of ERC funding programmes to our research environment.”
The ERC is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. The 2021 Advanced Grants competition will see funding worth €624 million going to 253 leading researchers across Europe. This year, the UK has received grants for 45 projects, Germany 61, the Netherlands 27 and France 26. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion, as part of the Horizon Europe programme.
Adapted from a University of Cambridge article.
- View the full list of Cambridge ERC grantees.
