Josef Penninger receives one of the prestigious “ERC Investigator Grants”. The goal of the promoted project with the name COMBINE is to identify new cancer genes with the means of functional genomics. From altogether 766 applicants in the field of Life Sciences 78 receive support. The evaluation was undertaken by a peer-review procedure. 13 researchers from Austria applied for this program. Apart from Josef Penninger’s, also the application of the IMP Director Barry Dickson was successful.   

The European Research Council (ERC) is an institution, established by the European Commission to fund basic oriented research. Within the ERC, two different kinds of funding are offered: the Starting Independent Researcher Grant for junior scientists and the Advanced Investigator Grant. 

Support is explicitly granted to so-called “frontier research”. The term denotes groundbreaking and visionary research, which abolishes the boundaries between basic and applied research, between classical disciplines, and between research and technology.