Queen Mary research excellence recognised with multimillion-euro grant success

The latest funding call saw a record 3,329 proposals submitted to the ERC Advanced Grant scheme. As part of the European Commission’s Horizon Europe programme, these grants aim to give exceptional research leaders the chance to pursue projects that are particularly ambitious and driven by curiosity. Less than 10% of this year’s applications were selected for funding (319 in total), of whom 62 awardees are based in the UK.  

Queen Mary’s Professor Neve Gordon, Professor of International Law and Human Rights, is one of these 62. He has received €2.5 million for his project ‘Health under Fire: An Investigation of the Protections IHL Affords Medical Units (HEAL)’. 

The HEAL project responds to a nine-fold increase in attacks on medical units in conflict zones since 2016. Some analysts attribute this increase to the lack of enforcement of existing legal protections. However, Professor Gordon maintains that the explanation is incomplete because it uncritically accepts the adequacy of the legal provisions affording hospitals protections, without investigating whether their structure, assumptions and operationalisation sufficiently protect medical units. This project introduces innovative methodological and conceptual frameworks to generate groundbreaking evidence and effective tools for assessing the adequacy of the legal provisions and their ability to reduce harm. 

Speaking on being awarded this €2.5 million grant, Professor Gordon said: “As someone who has been working on attacks on healthcare in conflict zones for several years, I am thrilled to be awarded this ERC Advanced Grant to fund a multidisciplinary team, to have the opportunity to produce new evidence and to develop creative and effective tools that aim to bolster the norm, obliging warring parties to protect medical units and thus help reduce civilian harm globally”. 

The second ERC grantee is Professor Michelangelo Campanella, Professor of Pharmacology and Director of Research in the William Harvey Research Institute at Queen Mary. He has been awarded an ERC Proof of Concept Grant for his project ‘Safer Therapeutics Through Early Toxicity Detection (STED)’, which will develop a novel cell-based assay capable of measuring both drug toxicity and efficacy in the same experiment. STED builds on Professor Campanella’s ERC Consolidator project ‘Form and Function of the Mitochondrial Retrograde Response’ and has the potential to reduce attrition in drug development, lower R&D costs, improve the success rate of drug candidates and accelerate the delivery of safer, more effective medicines to patients. 

Professor Campanella is one of 11 researchers in the UK (and 182 researchers in total) to be awarded this prestigious grant that is only available to principal investigators already awarded a main ERC grant. This funding supports the further exploration of frontier research discoveries that can be translated into practical applications that have commercial and societal potential. 

On being awarded this grant, Professor Campanella said: "Securing a second consecutive ERC grant is a significant milestone in my career. It reflects continued confidence in the originality and impact of my research and provides an opportunity to translate fundamental scientific discoveries into technologies that have the potential to improve human health. For me, it is both a recognition of the work my team has accomplished and a motivation to continue pursuing ambitious, high-risk research that can deliver tangible benefits for patients and society." 

Reflecting on this latest round of grant success, Professor Andrew Livingston, Vice-President for Research and Innovation at Queen Mary said: “ERC grants are highly competitive and sought after, only being awarded to those whose research is of the highest quality, with the greatest potential to make a positive impact.  

“It’s fantastic to see two Queen Mary academics included in these latest rounds of funding, and I would like to congratulate Professor Gordon and Professor Campanella on their grant success, which further demonstrates the quality and excellence of the research being carried out across Queen Mary.” 

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