Erica van de Waal receives ERC Starting Grant 2020

Branco Weiss Alumna Erica van de Waal has been awarded one of this year’s Starting Grants by the European Research Council (ERC). Van de Waal is among 436 researchers from 40 different nations who share a funding worth in total 677 million Euro.

Dr. van de Waals research proposal that won her the grant is called “Knowledge moves – From the individual to the system: Understanding knowledge movement”. With it, she aims to revolutionize our current knowledge of social information transmission within primate societies by linking ground-breaking approaches in the wild with modelling work: “Understanding information movement under changing environments will improve our ability to predict how primates will cope with the constantly increasing human impact and an unpredictable future, as well as refine our understanding of the uniqueness of cultural transfer in humans.”

The European Research Council, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premiere European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. Every year, it selects and funds the very best, creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based in Europe. The overall ERC budget from 2014 to 2020 is more than €13 billion, as part of the EU’s Research and Innovation programme, Horizon 2020.

Read the news on the ERC website