Second KI researcher awarded ERC Starting Grant
KI researcher Lu Yi has been awarded 1.5 million euros from the prestigious European Research Council Starting Grants. The funds will go toward research on different subtypes of depression with the goal of finding treatments that work for more people.
The purpose of the ERC Starting Grants is to support talented early-career scientist in launching their own projects, their own teams and pursuing their best ideas.
Lu Yi, a principal researcher at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, is the second KI researcher to be chosen in the 2021 call, which attracted more than 4,000 applicants. Earlier this year, it was announced that Marcus Buggert, an assistant professor at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge, was also among the recipients. Now Lu Yi is awarded for her project SUBTREAT.
“Major depressive disorder is a leading contributor to disability and suicide worldwide. Although multiple treatments are of proven efficacy, individual responses to treatments vary considerably. In SUBTREAT, my team propose to use advance data science and genetic methods to study depression subtypes, as a way to reduce individual variability of treatment effects in depression,” says Lu Yi.
Project title: Subtype as a key to reduce heterogeneity of treatment effects in major depressive disorder (SUBTREAT)
Facts about ERC StG 2021
- In January, ERC announced the first 397 grants to young researchers from this call. A total of EUR 619 million is awarded for projects covering all disciplines of research, including 111 projects within the area of life sciences.
- Grants have so far been awarded to universities and research organizations in 22 countries.
- Women are behind some 43 percent of approved applications, an increase from 37 percent in 2020 and the highest share to date. The grants are expected to create more than 2,000 jobs in the academic sector, according to an ERC press release.