The six-year projects will explore tiny programmable devices that could one day find and destroy precancerous cells before ovarian cancer develops; investigate how collagens acquire their correct chemical structure in the body and what happens when this process is disrupted; and develop faster, more energy-efficient ways of carrying out the complex calculations needed for science and AI.
The awards are among 48 ERC Synergy Grants worth €500 million announced through the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme, which brings together researchers with different areas of expertise to tackle major scientific challenges.
Cancer killing bots
The €10.6 million ECLIPSE project- Early Cancer Lesion Interception via Programmable Sensor-Equipped morphobots – will explore whether tiny programmable devices could detect and destroy the precancerous cells that can lead to ovarian cancer.
The devices aim to navigate the fallopian tubes, using advanced sensing and imaging to identify precancerous changes before delivering anticancer drugs directly to affected cells.
The approach could ultimately offer an alternative to preventative surgery for some women and lay the foundations for future clinical trials.
The project brings brings together Principal Investigators: Dr Christine K. Schmidt and Prof. Richard J. Edmondson from the University of Manchester, Prof. Ben G. Davis from the University of Oxford and Prof. Oliver G. Schmidt at Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany. Approximately €4.3 million of the funding is allocated to Manchester.
Dr Schmidt said: “We now know that many ovarian cancers begin in the fallopian tubes, but detecting the earliest precancerous changes remains a major challenge. ECLIPSE brings together expertise from very different scientific disciplines to develop entirely new ways of finding and targeting these cells. Our ultimate ambition is to intercept ovarian cancer before it progresses to a stage where treatment is often no longer curative.”
Rethinking scientific computing
The €10 million RaMPA project brings together Professors Françoise Tisseur and Jack Dongarra at Manchester, Professor Laura Grigori at EPFL and the Paul Scherrer Institute, and Professor Torsten Hoefler at ETH Zurich.
The international team aims to rethink how numerical precision is used in scientific computing. Rather than carrying out every calculation at the highest precision, RaMPA will develop the mathematical foundations, algorithms and software needed to adapt precision throughout a computation, while guaranteeing the accuracy and reliability of the final result. By exploiting modern and future computing hardware more effectively, the research will make scientific simulations faster and more energy efficient, and enable calculations that are currently beyond reach.
Professor Tisseur said: “By making much better use of the computing power available to us, we want scientists to tackle problems that are currently beyond reach, from more detailed climate simulations to increasingly complex questions in materials science and quantum chemistry, while reducing the energy needed to do so.
“The strength of RaMPA is that it brings together expertise in numerical mathematics, algorithms, software and computer systems. Combining these areas gives us the opportunity to rethink how scientific computations are performed, rather than simply making existing methods faster.”
“The University of Manchester is a public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester City Centre on Oxford Road.”
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