Miguel Soares, principal investigator at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), is the winner of the 1st Edition of the ERC-Oeiras Award, with a value of € 240,000. This award recognizes the merit of his project submitted to the European Research Council (ERC), allowing Miguel to continue the research work dedicated to infectious diseases caused by viruses, bacteria or parasites, such as sepsis, one of the main causes of global deaths.

Miguel Soares has excelled in the study of tolerance to disease, sepsis and malaria and sees this award as  “very important for us to continue our study in infectious diseases. We already know that there is a metabolic response that has to be orchestrated through the central nervous system and that is equally important to protect us from infectious diseases “explains the winner. But it is still necessary to put together several pieces of this puzzle to” understand how we can intervene to treat, in humans, diseases such as COVID19, malaria or septic shock ” .

The Oeiras ERC Frontier Research Incentive Awards are aimed at researchers who do or plan to do their research in institutions in the Municipality of Oeiras and who have submitted applications ranked as excellent by the ERC, but who have not had funding due to unavailability of funds. This award will allow researchers to have the means to continue their cutting-edge research, committing themselves to submitting a new proposal for ERC funding within 2 years.

ERC grants are among the most prestigious sources of science funding in the world. In 2020, only 818 proposals were selected and financed out of a total of 6320 applications. This highly competitive tender resulted in the award, in Portugal, of 13 of these fellowships, and some proposals ranked as excellent were left to be financed due to lack of funds. ERC Oeiras is an award financed by Oeiras Municipality, awarded annually, which aims to support scientific research, capture and retain talent in the Municipality of Oeiras and increase the attractiveness of Portugal as a science hub.

Oeiras ERC Frontier Research Incentive Awards

The research incentive awards “Oeiras – ERC Frontier Research Incentive Awards” are an initiative that funds candidates from any scientific area from institutions based in Oeiras, who have submitted applications for individual fellowships to the European Research Council (ERC) rated as excellent. This funding will enable to continue top research activities, allowing supported researchers to resubmit a proposal to ERC . The initiative is financed by Oeiras Municipality and coordinated by the Gulbenkian Collaborative Centre at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência through a monitoring committee made up of members of the Oeiras City Council, Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica and Instituto Superior Técnico.