Four Imperial scientists win European grants to develop research concepts

Four Imperial scientists have won prestigious European Research Council (ERC) grants to develop their research concepts.

Two academics from the Department of Computing and two from the Department of Bioengineering were successful in the latest wave of Proof of Concept awards. 

Proof of Concept grants – each worth €150,000 – help researchers to bridge the gap between the discoveries stemming from their frontier research and the practical application of the findings, including early phases of their commercialisation. 

I n this wave of funding the ERC awarded grants to 100 projects across Europe, including 15 in the UK. 

President of the European Research Council Professor Maria Leptin said: “The ERC initially introduced its Proof of Concept funding because frontier research often generates radically new ideas that drive innovation and business inventiveness. We must invest seriously in such curiosity-driven frontier research, if Europe is to be able to lead.” 

Professor Francesca Toni, Department of Computing 

Professor Toni’s project CArLA aims to revolutionise and democratise the process of building causal AI models. 
 
Professor Toni explains: “With these, we can capture causal effects amongst features in data, rather than simple correlations, which is important when studying the effect of external interventions into a system. The current systems however often lack interpretability and transparency.”  
 
CArLA will provide a platform for transparent, explainable, interactive and contestable causal discovery, based upon an existing principled methodology and prototype, as well as well-established eXplainable AI (XAI) techniques.  
 
Professor Toni added: “Effectively, we use computational argumentation to build and evaluate a debate about causal principles and statistical methods.” 
 
On winning the grant, Professor Toni said: “Being awarded an ERC Proof of Concept grant is a great honour and privilege. It allows focus on delivering impact from my ERC Advanced ADIX project and gives prestige to the research we are conducting.”   

Professor Toni will be collaborating on the project with Fabrizio Russo and Dr Anna Rapberger, both from the Department of Computing.

Professor Cristian Cadar, Department of Computing 

Professor Cadar’s grant follows up on the ERC Consolidator Grant 
called PASS, which focused on helping software systems evolve safely and securely. 

The new project, FORTE, focuses on practical applications of our larger ERC Consolidator Grant PASS on safe and secure software evolution.  

Professor Cadar explains: “Developing software is a cognitively demanding task. While coming up with a software solution for a problem is already challenging, continuous changes in requirements and in the environment where the software is used make it even harder. As a result, evolving software systems is challenging, and software changes often introduce bugs and security vulnerabilities.”  

Professor Cadar added: “Furthermore, even if such issues are detected in time, fixing them can be equally challenging.  Recently, generative AI promises to change the game, by being able to automatically repair code.  While these repairs have the potential to improve and accelerate software development, they are often unreliable and can introduce problems of their own.” 

In FORTE, Professor Cadar aims to develop an automated process that adapts recently-developed program analysis techniques to enable an AI-augmented process of developing software that is both efficient, safe and secure. 

Dr Rodrigo Ledesma Amaro, Department of Bioengineering 

Dr Ledesma Amaro’s grant is focused on making sustainable food and textile colourants and dyes more efficient by using engineered microorganisms – such as yeasts. 

The grant builds on the previous ERC Starting Grant award for the project DEUSBIO which engineered microbes to provide them with new functionalities that allow them to sustainably produce fuels, chemicals, materials or food. 

The funding will be used to perform innovative research using state of the art equipment, to generate new IP and promote the creation of a startup.

Dr Ledesma Amaro will be working on the project with Dr Cinzia Klemm.  
 
Dr Ledesma Amaro said: “It is an honour to be awarded such a prestigious grant and to be able to contribute to the translation of the technologies we have developed in our previous ERC starting grant.” 

Professor Rylie Green, Department of Bioengineering 

Professor Green's project will focus on improving the way in which electronic devices interact with the peripheral nervous system, primarily for controlling upper limb prostheses used by amputees.

Professor Green explained: "Peripheral nerves carry sensory and motor information between the brain and the rest of the body. Technologies that can monitor and control this flow of information are called peripheral nerve interfaces (PNIs) and they are widely used for neuroprosthetic control, as well as the treatment of multiple neurological and metabolic disorders.

"However, current PNIs are made from materials that are fundamentally different from biological tissues, and this often results in progressive nerve damage and poor device performance."

To address this issue, the group will explore a novel class of hybrid PNIs fabricated from soft and flexible polymer electronics and components of the biological tissues themselves – specifically spare muscle tissue. This approach will provide seamless device-tissue integration, leading to more robust PNIs with improved functionality and control of prosthetic limbs.

This project will be carried out in collaboration with Dr Stephen Kemp from the University of Michigan, USA. Professor Kemp has developed surgical constructs for amputees using nerves embedded in spare muscle tissue.

Professor Green added: "Receiving this award is a testament to the world-class and transformative research that is carried out within our group at the Department of Bioengineering.

"It signifies that our work is considered to be at the cutting edge of scientific innovation, and ultimately supports our goal of developing breakthrough technologies and demonstrating their real-world functionality with an aim to improve human health and well-being."

Horizon Europe at Imperial

Open international collaboration is essential to Imperial's success: our academics work across 192 countries and European partners are critical to this: about 60% of Imperial’s research papers with a US collaborator also have a European co-author, as do 72% with Canada and 81% with Brazil. Participation in the EU research framework programmes is a springboard to productive partnerships across the world – strengthening the influence and impact of UK research. Imperial was the 8^th most successful higher education institution in Horizon 2020 and the programme has funded many collaborations, supporting our researchers to work with colleagues across Europe on vital issues: ranging from new diagnostic tools for childhood disease, an AIDS vaccine and combatting wildfires to quantum, data and climate technologies.

The UK is now fully associated to Horizon Europe and Imperial research can participate in and lead projects across the programme. Just recently, Imperial was named as part of a consortium looking to equip healthcare providers with resources to detect, diagnose and prevent Alzheimer’s disease. Imperial academics have also recently kicked off other Horizon Europe projects on revolutionary optimisation tools to drastically reduce emissions in the design of aero engines, research into exposure to endocrine disruptors and the effects on human health, and helping to better understand cloud-aerosol interactions to more accurately predict extreme weather events and support planning for climate adaption and mitigation.

To find out more about opportunities in Horizon Europe, please get in touch with the Research Office and the Enterprise Research Impact Management Office.