The European Research Council (ERC) has released details of the first round of recipients of its Advanced Grants in the physical sciences and engineering fields. Some 105 of the almost 1,000 applicants from these disciplines have been allocated funding.

The ERC's Advanced Grants are aimed at experienced researchers with a strong record in groundbreaking research, and the sole criterion on which they are judged is scientific excellence. For this Advanced Grants, the European Research Council (ERC) received a total of 2,167 applications. Further details of the successful candidates in the life sciences, and social sciences and humanities fields will be published in the coming months.

The physical sciences and engineering grant recipients will be carrying out research in a diverse range of fields. Their host institutions are located in 19 countries in the EU and the countries which have signed up to the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

For example, Hubertus Fischer of the University of Bern in Switzerland won funding for his MATRICs ('Modern approaches for temperature reconstructions in polar ice cores') project. He plans to develop new methods and techniques for analysing ice cores in greater detail, with the ultimate goal of unravelling how the climate changed in different regions of the world by analysing a single ice core.

Dr Fischer is also involved in the EU-funded EPICA ('European project for ice coring in Antarctica') project, which this year won the Descartes Prize for Transnational Collaborative Research at the European Science Awards.

Another recipient is Professor Leo Kouwenhoven of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. His project is on quantum opto-electronics, and over the course of his five-year project, he hopes to demonstrate the principle of the transfer of quantum information from a single electron to a single photon.

Other subjects covered by the successful applicants include:

• Stellar evolution.
• Cleaner internal combustion engines.
• Molecular motors.
• Particle accelerators with intense lasers.
• Number theory.
• The mathematical modelling of the cardiovascular system.
• Dynamics of volcanoes, etc.

The ERC recently published its second call for proposals for its Starting Grants, which are targeted at researchers in the early stages of their career. The second call for proposals for the Advanced Grants is due to be launched in November of this year.