A prestigious accolade for four Berlin scientists: Prof. Dr. Kevin Pagel from Freie Universität Berlin and the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society as well as Prof. Dr. Philipp Adelhelm, Prof. Dr. Susanne Schreiber, and Prof. Dr. phil. Martin Rolfs from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin have each been honored with a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC).

The Consolidator Grant is one of the highest endowed and most prestigious funding measures of the European Union (EU). The basis for the award is the scientific excellence of the applicant and the innovative character of the research project. The funding is awarded for a period of up to five years.

The team around Philipp Adelhelm, Professor of Physical Chemistry of Materials at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, is taking on a technical challenge that is important for e-mobility and the entire energy transition: the storing of large amounts of electrical energy. The objective is to develop batteries that store electricity especially efficiently and conserve resources.

Kevin Pagel is Professor of Bioorganic Chemistry at Freie Universität Berlin and a visiting scientist at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society. Over the next five years, he will use EU funding to develop new spectroscopic techniques to investigate sugar structures in detail. Sugars are of particular importance in medicine and biology, but have so far not been sufficiently understood.

The group led by Susanne Schreiber, Professor of Theoretical Neurophysiology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, deals with the interaction of the nerve cells of our brain. It examines a new type of action potential that has been largely overlooked in research so far. The team is analyzing the nerve cells using mathematical models and computer simulations. The project shall investigate basic neuronal mechanisms responsible for epilepsy, for example.

Martin Rolfs, Heisenberg Professor of General Psychology – Active Perception and Cognition at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, is combining innovative technologies and state-of-the-art psychophysical tools to characterize the systematics of visual actions. In an interdisciplinary team, he is posing the question of whether the specific laws of our movements fundamentally structure our visual perception of the world.