Aljaz Godec, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen has been awarded a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). With 2 million euros, the ERC will fund the work of Godec’s team for five years.
The competition for the funding is fierce: The ERC selected only 371 of 2,222 applications in this round. “Receiving the Consolidator Grant is a fantastic validation of our work,” Godec says happily. “The reviews were extremely positive and exceeded my expectations.” Moreover, the grant strengthens the reputation and presence of his Mathematical bioPhysics group in their field of research, he adds.
The team develops and applies methods from mathematical physics to explore complex dynamic processes in biophysics. In their ERC project HiddenBio, the scientists aim to develop new mathematical approaches to analyse processes that are coupled to some form of hidden dynamics. This could be, for example, the folding of a protein observed in a single-molecule experiment. Proteins need to arrange themselves in specific structures to perform their individual functions in the cell. “We will provide a new framework for interpreting experiments that will provide access to information that was previously inaccessible to researchers,” Godec outlines. “Among other things, we hope to provide new insights into the function of molecular nanomachines, cell movement during tissue regeneration, and the self-organization of non-equilibrium systems.”
The new methods will not only have the potential to fundamentally advance biophysical research: “Our project is conceptually very abstract and mathematically intensive, but has the potential for very exciting and versatile applications,” the research group leader explains.
Contact
Dr. Aljaz Godec
Emmy Noether Research Group Leader
+49 551 201-2304
aljaz.godec@...
