The Netherlands wins 44 European starting grants

The starting grants are intended for researchers who are at the start of their academic career and who completed their PhD two to seven years ago. Almost 2,700 proposals were submitted this round, with a success rate of 14.8 percent.

Communication between parts of the brain

Sanne ten Oever of Maastricht University says she finds it "surreal, fun and partly exciting" that she is receiving the grant. The excitement "lies in the fact that I am now primarily engaged in my own research, but will soon be leading others who will be researching questions that I find important and interesting."

Ten Oever is receiving one and a half million euros for her five-year research program Back to the future. In it, she aims to unravel how communication occurs between two parts of the brain, the frontal and sensory areas.

"We know that the frontal areas send information to the sensory areas to better process new input from the senses, but we don't yet know exactly how," Ten Oever explains. "So the first research question is how that communication happens. The second question is whether we can improve that communication by stimulating the brain with electrical signals."

In third place

The highest number of grants awarded went to researchers at German (87) and French (50) institutions. The Netherlands managed to secure 44 starting grants, comfortably beating bigger countries such as Italy and the United Kingdom (both 32).

HOP, Hein Cuppen / Peter Doorakkers