Three UAB researchers receive Starting Grants

15/12/2014

In the 2014 edition of the Starting Grants, the European Research Council has decided to confer these grants on three UAB researchers: Caterina Calsamiglia, from the Department of Economics and Economic History and MOVE (Markets, Organizations and Votes in Economics), Iñaki Permanyer, from the Centre for Demographic Studies, and Albert Quintana, Ramón y Cajal researcher who will soon form part of the Department of Cell Biology, Physiology and Immunology and the Institute of Neuroscience.

Caterina Calsamiglia received her PhD at Yale University in 2005. She has been a UAB lecturer since then. She is currently the deputy director of the Master in Economics of Public Policy at Barcelona GSE and member of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Group, directed by James Heckman of the University of Chicago. Her research is related to the field of public economics and distributive justice, and touches upon themes such as equal opportunities in the design of public policies and on how the design of school choice systems affects children's performance and the segregation of neighbourhoods and schools.

Iñaki Permanyer earned his BSc in Mathematics from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (1997), his diploma in Mathematics from the University of Lausanne (1998) and his PhD in Demography from the UAB (2007). Throughout his career he has spent several research stays in different departments, such as in the City and Regional Planning Department of Cornell University and the “Comisión Ecónomica para América Latina y el Caribe” in Chile. Currently, his lines of research cover the areas of gender inequality, poverty, socioeconomic inequalities and polarisation and human development and economic growth.

Albert Quintana earned his BSc in Biology (2001) and his PhD (2007) from the UAB, where he studied the brain's neuroinflammatory mechanisms after suffering lesions. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Howard Hughes Medical Institute of the University of Washington, Seattle, and is currently head researcher of his own group and Assistant Professor at the Seattle Children's Research Institute - University of Washington. His main line of research focuses on identifying molecular mechanisms which regulate the susceptibility of neurons in mitochondrial diseases. Next year he will form part of the UAB Department of Cell Biology, Physiology and Immunology and the Institute of Neuroscience as a Ramón y Cajal researcher.

Eight grants for Catalonia

A total of eight grants have been awarded to researchers in Catalonia in this seventh call for Starting Grants. This figure represents 2.4% of the total grants awarded and 40% of those awarded in Spain. Of the 328 researchers receiving grants in 2014, 20 of them conduct their research projects in Spain.

Worth highlighting are the three grants awarded in the field of Social Sciences and the Humanities, which represent 100% of the grants awarded in Spain in this area and 4.9% of the total grants awarded by the ERC. Two of these grants were awarded to UAB researchers Caterina Calsamiglia and Iñaki Permanyer.

In Life Sciences, Catalonia's research system was also awarded three grants - one for the INc researcher Albert Quintana - and this represents 27% of the grants awarded in Spain and 2.4% of the total grants awarded. In Physical and Experimental Sciences, the two grants awarded represent 33% of those awarded in Spain and 1.4% of the total.

Starting Grants go towards the funding of young researchers and are awarded according to strict criteria in scientific excellence. They include a maximum of two million euros in funding.

With the results of this last edition, a total of 72 researchers in Catalonia have received Starting Grants since 2007, the year in which they were created. Of these 72, 55% conduct their research in public research centres of Catalonia (CERCA centres) and 38% in Catalan universities.