KU Leuven: Four ERC Starting Grants for KU Leuven
The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded its Starting Grants. This year, four KU Leuven researchers may receive such a grant: literary scholar Núria Codina Solà, engineer Benjamin Gorissen, bioengineer Koenraad Van Meerbeek and chemical engineer Xing Yang.
ERC Starting Grants are grants for promising starting researchers who obtained their PhD two to seven years ago. The Starting Grants are awarded for a period of five years and can amount to 1.5 million euros.
Núria Codina Solà: How Literary Collaboration Amplifies Migrant Voices
Postdoctoral researcher at the Literature Research Unit
“My project will explore how non-profit organisations, collaboration between professional and amateur writers and crowdfunding initiatives enable migrants to be part of the literary world. Literary collaboration is not a new phenomenon, but today’s high speed, massive production, and migration contexts are truly unique. The collaborations we will study challenge traditional notions of authorship, represent a political strategy that promotes cross-cultural exchange and the social integration of migrants, and offer an alternative economic model that introduces new voices to the publishing world.”
“Initially, the focus will be on the European context and the seven languages I speak myself, but I hope that the three PhD students and the postdoc I want to hire also speak non-European languages. This can create new opportunities for the project. Much will also depend on the political context and the humanitarian crises of tomorrow, which may lead to new initiatives.”
Benjamin Gorissen: a new light on soft robotics
BOF tenure track lecturer Faculty of Engineering; Department of Mechanical Engineering
ILUMIS is the name of the project with which Professor Benjamin Gorissen obtained an ERC Starting Grant. He goes in search of the robots of the future. And they will often have to be -literally- soft, especially if they are going to interact with people. Such soft robots can be made to move using air pressure that inflates or shrinks ‘balloons’. But that currently requires a tangle of pipes, valves and compressors.
ILUMIS wants it simpler. One tube for the supply of air or a liquid, which can control actuators or ‘balloons’ individually by varying the pressure. Those ‘balloons’ are elastic. By varying the shape, thickness or material, you can make them react to a specific pressure, and thus ‘program’ them. The possible applications are wide. Exoskeletons, surgical instruments, machines that have to manipulate soft objects,… Professor Gorissen is even thinking of cheap mini-robots that can explore the surface of planets.
Koenraad Van Meerbeek: functional ecosystems of the future
Tenure track lecturer at the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering; Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences; member of the ‘KU Leuven Plant Institute’
Nature is increasingly under pressure from human activities. Current forms of conservation try to counteract any change in natural ecosystems. However, due to the changing climate, this tactic is becoming less and less effective in halting biodiversity loss. Species that we now protect in a certain location may no longer be able to survive there by the end of this century due to the changing climate.
In the ERC project FutureNature I research how we can use assisted migration, the translocation of species by humans, to design new ecosystems that are robust to climate change. Using big data and advanced models, we simulate plant communities that will perform best under future climate conditions. In a large-scale field experiment, the performance of these new communities will be tested under different climate scenarios in which the temperature and rainfall will be manipulated. By operationalizing assisted migration, FutureNature will contribute to new solutions to counter the biodiversity crisis.
Xing Yang: new membrane technology based on natural cell function
BOF Associate Professor at the Faculty of Engineering; Department of Chemical Engineering; member of the ‘KU Leuven Institute for Sustainable Metals and Minerals’ (SIM²)
One of the known challenges for the transition to a sustainable energy supply is the need for certain critical raw materials. Metals such as lithium and cobalt are crucial components of lithium-ion batteries and are therefore indispensable for the production of smartphones and electric cars, among other things. Although these metals can be found in large quantities in the oceans and can be recovered from battery waste, current technology fails to efficiently filter them with the necessary industrial purity.
Chemical engineer Xing Yang wants to change this with the ‘IonFracMem’ project by developing membranes that combine fast throughput with targeted filtration and high purity. The research project is based on human nature and the very efficient functioning of the cell membrane. Professor Yang aims to translate these natural mechanisms into the design of new membrane technology. If the technology proves successful, it can also be used to directly produce drinkable water with the right minerals.