European Research Council Funds Excellent Young Researchers of Heidelberg University
This year, two young scientists of Heidelberg University will receive an ERC Starting Grant for excellent junior researchers. The highly endowed five-year grant of the European Research Council (ERC) was awarded to Dr. Carmen Ruiz de Almodóvar of Heidelberg University’s Biochemistry Center (BZH) and Prof. Dr. Jonas Grethlein of the Department of Classical Philology. Dr. Ruiz de Almodóvar will receive about 1.5 million EUR for her project “Neuro-vascular communication in the neural tube during development” that explores the molecular similarities of nervous and vascular systems. Prof. Grethlein will receive roughly 1.4 million EUR in funding for his literature project “AncNar – Experience and Teleology in Ancient Narrative”.
The ERC supports funding of basic research in order to promote visionary projects and develop new interdisciplinary fields of knowledge. Its funding programmes are open to top researchers of any age and nationality who want to conduct pioneering research in the 27 EU member states or in associated countries. Starting in 2013, the current ERC Starting Grants funding line will be divided into ERC Starting Grants for promising young scientists at the beginning of an independent research career, and ERC Consolidator Grants for excellent scientists whose newly established independent research group is in the consolidation phase. Additional funding lines are Advanced Grants for excellent established scientists and Synergy Grants for groups of two to four researchers. Scientists who have already received a Starting or Advanced Grant are also eligible for the “Proof of Concept” scheme that aims at turning ideas from research projects into innovations.
With her project, Dr. Ruiz de Almodóvar hopes to gain a better understanding of the significance of signal paths and cellular mechanisms in the communication between nervous and vascular systems during embryonic development. Using biochemical, cellular and molecular methods, Ruiz de Almodóvar and her team explore the “neurovascular link”, the molecular connection between neurons and endothelial cells, by means of mouse models and organ-typical cultures. Ruiz de Almodóvar studied biochemistry at the University of Granada in Spain and earned her PhD in 2004 with a thesis on programmed cell death in breast cancer cells. She then worked as a postdoc researcher at the Vesalius Research Center at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. After several months as a guest scientist at Genentech, a biotechnology company based in San Francisco, Ruiz de Almodóvar transferred to Heidelberg in 2011. She heads the research group “Molecular and Cellular Mechanisms of Neurobiology: Focused on the Neurovascular link” at the university’s Biochemistry Center. She is also a member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Neurosciences of Heidelberg University.
The ERC-funded research of Prof. Grethlein aims at developing a new approach to exploring the anthropological function of the narrative form using ancient Greek and Roman texts, and thereby gains a deeper understanding of narrative in the ancient world. Working in a team with two postdocs and two PhD students, Grethlein will examine both the literary genres of epic poetry, historiography and the novel, and systematic questions such as the narrative function of oracles and the role of time in literary criticism in the ancient world. Jonas Grethlein (born 1978) studied Greek and Latin philology and history in Göttingen, Oxford and Freiburg. He earned his PhD at Freiburg University in 2002 and became a professor of classic philology and ancient history in 2005. After a two-year stay at Harvard University, Jonas Grethlein was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara in 2007. In the following year, he accepted the chair of Greek Literature at Heidelberg University. In 2006, Grethlein was awarded the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize of the German Research Foundation. He is a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.
