The ERC Synergy Grant is a grant scheme of the European Research Council, that promotes ambitious collaboration across the boundaries of scientific fields in universities to solve complex problems. Projects funded under the scheme are headed by more than one principal investigator from different universities or research institutes.
A successful funding application presents grounds for why the proposed research cannot successfully be carried out under the direction of a single principal investigator. Project leaders must have excellent scientific qualifications, either early on in their careers or for a ten-year period.
Tuomas Heikkilä’s ERC-funded project, CODICUM, will investigate how texts, books and related knowhow were transmitted to Northern Europe and developed here as well as their impact on Northern European societies. The project is based on the world’s largest collection of mediaeval parchment fragments preserved in the Nordic countries, which is studied using both traditional humanities methods and the most advanced scientific methods.
The project aims to
The project has four principal investigators
Working at the University of Helsinki and the Swedish National Archives in Stockholm, Tuomas Heikkilä’s ten-member team will focus on mediaeval northern literary networks using traditional methods of humanities as well as computer-assisted and bioscientific methods.
The CODICUM project will expose the ancient, many-forked roots of our literary culture dating back one thousand years, and challenges us to think about national history as part of a wider international context. The project will illustrate the centuries-long strength of literary culture: joining the Latin-language cultural sphere of Western Europe in the Middle Ages has dictated the history of the Nordic countries from one century to the next.
The CODICUM project is an example of modern research funding, where private and public funding join forces. CODICUM has been refined into its current form in earlier research projects funded in Finland by, for example, Emil Aaltonen Foundation, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation as well as Helsingin Sanomat Foundation and in the Nordic countries by NOS-HS.
The Medieval Book and Networks of Northern Europe c. 1000–1500: Texts, Crafts, Fragments (CODICUM). Project duration: 2025–2031.
Emilia Kilpua’s ERC funded project explores how severe the effects of geomagnetic reversals and polarity excursions on the Earth’s environment can be.
GERACLE explores the currently largely unknown consequences of past and future Earth’s magnetic field reversals and polarity excursions on our habitat. It covers the whole Sun - Earth system to explore interconnected processes in unusual geomagnetic field states under wide range of solar forcing and climate conditions. The expected solar physics breakthroughs include novel understanding of solar and heliospheric structures from Grand solar maximum to minimum conditions.
The key ambition of GERACLE is to build a unified Sun - Earth system framework to investigate magnetospheric and atmospheric processes during varying geomagnetic field, climate and solar conditions using unprecedentedly accurate paleomagnetic records and novel models. The main goal is to answer the longstanding question on how severe the effects of geomagnetic reversals and polarity excursions on the Earth’s environment can be.
GERACLE allows estimating biological and technological impacts during unusual geomagnetic field states, and understanding conditions under which life has been and will be evolving. The unified Sun - Earth System framework with rigorous characterization of uncertainties will open new horizons to study also other solar system planets and exoplanets. The project is also expected to greatly improve our understanding of coupled processes in present day geomagnetic field state as well, in particular during extreme solar events.
GERACLE is done in joint with
Geomagnetic Excursions and Reversals: Establishing their Atmospheric and Climatic Effects, 72 months.
Previous ERC-projects of Emilia Kilpua: Consolidator Grant -project SolMAG (Unraveling the structure solar flux ropes and their magnetosheath), 2017 – 2022.
Otso Ovaskainen’s ERC-funded project surveys global biodiversity using the latest scientific tools.
In the project, DNA and audio samples are collected by automated means, as well as images taken by trail cameras, from over 450 locations across the globe. By utilising the samples and top-of-the-line statistical analysis methods, the researchers can potentially map out as much as half of the global biodiversity of insects and fungi.
At the same time, the researchers strive to understand, among other things, the effects of climate change and changes in land use on biodiversity. In addition, entirely new statistical methods particularly suited to investigating biodiversity are being developed in the project.
Ovaskainen’s project is producing information on the world’s biodiversity on an entirely new scale. A more in-depth understanding of biodiversity and the effects of human action enables increasingly responsible decisions.
A Planetary Inventory of Life – a New Synthesis Built on Big Data Combined with Novel Statistical Methods, 2020–2025.
From 2008 to 2013, Ovaskainen carried out a project entitled Spatial Ecology: Bringing Mathematical Theory and Data Together with a Starting Grant awarded by the ERC.