The Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) in Klosterneuburg receives over 10 million Euro by the European Research Council (ERC). Four research projects – in astrophysics, neuroscience, brain imaging, and math – were awarded around 2.5 million Euro each in the form of a competitive ERC Advanced Grant. ISTA is one of the most successful institutions at winning grants from this EU funding body.
The European Research Council awards Advanced Grants to “active researchers who have a track-record of significant research achievements.” They are awarded for a period of up to 5 years and for up to 2.5 million Euro, plus additional funds for ‘start-up’ costs for researchers moving from a third country to the EU, for the purchase of major equipment, or for experimental and field work. The Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) could now secure a quadruple success in the most recent call for these prestigious European grants. They go to four ISTA professors: astrophysicist Zoltan Haiman, neuroscientist Peter Jonas, biophysicist Johann Danzl, and mathematician Tamás Hausel.
Zoltan Haiman: Black holes circling each other
It is now well understood that black holes exist, both small ones (comparable in mass to our Sun) and much bigger ones (a million to a billion times more massive). Less known is what exactly happens when two of them ‘meet,’ explains ISTA Professor Zoltan Haiman. “If two black holes get sufficiently close to feel each other’s gravitational pull, they will start orbiting each other and form a binary. Such binaries spiral in and can eventually merge into a single bigger black hole. This could play a role in growing the big black holes we see in the centers of galaxies. How often this happens, how long the inspiral process takes, and how exactly it unfolds are currently all poorly understood.”
This is where the 2.6 million Euro project Bright BHBs will come in. “We will study the inspirals and mergers of binary black holes, the radiation they emit, as well as the ripples in space they generate during this process, which are known as gravitational waves,” explains Haiman. Using theoretical modeling and advanced computer simulations, his team at ISTA will predict the signals that binary black hole systems emit throughout the process of their merger. This will help to identify them in the deluge of data expected from large astronomical surveys of the sky. Haiman is looking even further ahead: “The research will also aid in interpreting data from gravitational wave detectors, including those from the future space mission called LISA, expanding our understanding of black holes and their evolution throughout cosmic history.”
Originally from Budapest, Hungary, Haiman has spent most of his professional career so far in the USA. The ERC grant will support him to set up his new research group at ISTA, which he describes as “such a dynamically growing research institute.” Zoltan Haiman will officially start his position as professor at ISTA in July of this year.
Peter Jonas: Understanding how we store and recall memories
In the field of cellular neuroscience, Magdalena Walz Professor for Life Sciences Peter Jonas will receive 2.5 million Euro for the CA3-SYNGRAM project. “With this project, we aim to better understand how our brains store and recall information by studying memory traces, called ‘engrams’,” Jonas explains. “We will use a new combination of techniques – electrophysiology, structural analysis, and in vivo recordings – to closely examine the tiny changes in our brain cells and connections that happen when memories form. By focusing on a key brain area involved in learning and memory, called the hippocampal CA3 network, my team and I hope to uncover how these changes occur and how memories can be efficiently stored and retrieved.”
In the long run, this fundamental knowledge can be of great help in tackling neurological conditions. “Several brain diseases affect the ability to create and recall memories, such as Alzheimer´s disease, depression, or posttraumatic stress disorder,” Jonas points out. “The experiments we plan will help us understand a crucial question in brain science, which could lead to new ways to treat these diseases.” This is a typical example of how fundamental research is needed to advance applied research and medical applications.
Peter Jonas is one of the first professors of ISTA, having joined the Institute in 2010. The researcher, who worked in Freiburg, Germany, before that, has received several distinctions throughout his career but he underlines the specific relevance of ERC grants. “I am particularly happy about this award because it is the third ERC Advanced Grant in my scientific career. There are only very few researchers in Europe who have achieved this,” Jonas explains. He received ERC Advanced Grants in 2011 (for the project NANOPHYS) and in 2016 (for the project GIANTSYN), now being the first ISTA professor to receive three grants of this specific type.
Johann Danzl: Taking a good look at our brain
To better understand how brain networks are organized and how they function, we need imaging technologies. Standard technologies that people might know from a doctor's visit include MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and CT (Computed Tomography) scans. Microscopy, on the other hand, provides a much more detailed view of the tissue’s architecture. Professor Johann Danzl, originally from Tyrol, Austria, holds both a physics and a medical degree. For years, he has been researching and improving optical microscopy for reconstructing brain tissue with his ISTA research group. He has created novel imaging pipe lines such as LIONESS, CATS, and most recently – in collaboration with Google Research – LICONN.
Improving the imaging of brain tissue is a vast research field. “Many current methods are limited, because they either can't clearly show the connections between brain cells or they can´t capture the molecular details of the cells and their connections. One has to decide between the one and the other,” explains Danzl. “Our new method, MOLCONN, aims to combine detailed maps of brain cell connections with information about the molecules in and around these cells. We hope this will provide insights into how brain structure relates to its function. Our project will study healthy mice to explore how brain connections and cell activities change with age. Then, we will apply this knowledge to human brain tissue.” Danzl will receive 2.8 million Euro from the ERC for this research project.
He hopes that the results will improve our understanding of healthy and sick brains. “Ultimately, our aim is to create a detailed model of the brain’s connections and molecules, which could help us better understand conditions like Parkinson’s – a disease affecting about 1 in 100 people above the age of 60,” says Danzl.
Tamás Hausel: A three-way dictionary for math
“The mathematical world is full of mysteries,” says ISTA Professor Tamás Hausel. “Several mathematical disciplines have developed in fascinating ways, but often in isolation from one another. They have a hard time talking to each other.” Hausel aims to help bridge this divide, using his 2.5 million Euro ERC Advanced Grant ViaFiPoS to create a ‘three-way dictionary.’
“We aim to connect three complex areas of mathematics — representation theory, topology, and mirror symmetry — using a new method called fixed point schemes. For this, we introduce ‘big algebras’, which are tools that can reveal complex information about how mathematical structures relate to each other – by encoding symmetries in a novel way,” Hausel explains.
While it is already difficult for different disciplines in math to ‘talk’ to each other, it becomes even more challenging when one includes other sciences, such as physics. Hausel is also taking this extra step. “That is why I am excited to also apply our techniques to bridge math and quantum physics. We will test certain theories about mirror symmetry, which is important in mathematics and modern physics. The findings could improve our understanding of symmetries in quantum mechanics,” explains the researcher, who is originally from Budapest, Hungary.
This is Hausel’s second ERC Advanced Grant after the AriPhyHiMo project in 2013. Although these grants are awarded to individuals, Hausel wants to underline that the proposal for his new grant was featuring background work by many people in his group. “In particular work by several PhD students contributed to the foundation of the proposal. For one of the projects in the proposal, for example, we could use beautiful 3D prints to communicate ideas. These were produced at our ISTA Machine Shop during a rotation project with a PhD student.”
ISTA: High success with ERC grants
Despite having opened its doors only in 2009, the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) is one of the most successful research institutions in Europe when it comes to ERC grants. While the average success rate for ERC frontier grants typically falls between 8 and 15%, ISTA boasts an impressive 49%. With the most recent four grants, 80% of ISTA’s professors have now received at least one ERC frontier grant, 23% have been awarded several ERC frontier grants, including three professors who have even been awarded three.
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