ERC ADVANCED GRANTS 2011:
Two Norwegians earn top European grants
For their respective research on child diabetes and the solar atmosphere, Norwegian professors Pål Rasmus Njølstad and Mats Carlsson went all the way to the top in this autumn’s competition for funding from the EU’s open arena for established researchers.
The two have been awarded NOK 17.6 million and NOK 19.5 million, respectively, in Advanced Grants from the European Research Council (ERC).
A total of six Norwegian applicants reached the second round in this year’s allocations. Final decisions for awards in the domains of Life Sciences and Social Sciences & Humanities will be taken in the course of November.
Diabetes and children
Pål Rasmus Njølstad is searching for what causes children and young adults to develop diabetes. One avenue that he and his research group at the University of Bergen have been investigating is whether the explanation may be genetic.
Professor Pål Rasmus Njølstad (Photo: Kim E. Andreassen, På Høyden/UiB)
With the ERC grant, Professor Njølstad will establish a new research group focused on finding the genetic relationships between obesity and diabetes in children. The researchers will utilise data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) and the Medical Birth Registry of Norway.
“The obesity wave sweeping over society also affects children,” he says. One question the professor seeks to answer, according to the University of Bergen newspaper På Høyden, is whether people genetically predisposed to obesity are also more predisposed to developing type II diabetes later in life.
“As a paediatrician I have dealt with many overweight children. It is critical that we find out more about how obesity and diabetes arise, so we can more effectively treat this significant group of patients.”
Physical characteristics of the sun’s atmosphere
Mats Carlsson of the University of Oslo has designed his project Physics of the Solar Chromosphere to enhance understanding of the atmospheric layer of the sun known as the chromosphere.
Professor Mats Carlsson (Photo: UiO)
The chromosphere – the layer between the sun’s surface and the corona (the sun’s outermost, eruptive atmospheric layer) – is where vast amounts of energy are stored and converted. Its physical characteristics affect the temperature of the corona as well as the acceleration and composition of solar winds and solar flares.
Professor Carlsson will study a number of questions related to the energy in the chromosphere by analysing data from the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) satellite, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and Hinode space observatories, the ground-based Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST) on the Spanish island of La Palma, and selected data models.
The professor plans to use the ERC grant primarily for hiring additional post-doctoral research fellows and the procurement of scientific equipment.
Funding decisions pending in two domains
The recipients of the prestigious ERC Advanced Grants have so far been announced only for the Physical Sciences & Engineering domain. In the two remaining domains, Life Sciences and Social Sciences & Humanities, the decisions will be handed down in mid-November and at the end of November, respectively.
- Published:
- 10.11.2011
- Last updated:
- 10.11.2011
