Tomàs Marquès Bonet, director of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE:CSIC-UPF) and ICREA research professor at UPF, has obtained an ERC Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The researcher will receive a grant of 1.896.875 euros to carry out, over five years, research focusing on the processes that shape the genomic variation of great apes.

Entitled “Great ape genome variation now and then: current diversity and genomic relics of extinct primates”, (with the acronym ApeGenomeDiversity), professor Marquès-Bonet’s project seeks to define the ancestral diversity of the great apes either by using the fossil record or by rescuing parts of extinct species by searching genomes of current apes. “This project will help us understand how diversity is formed in species, and further it will shed light on the adaptive effects of hybridization between species,” says Marquès-Bonet.

Marquès-Bonet is one of the 6 Catalan and 12 Spanish researchers awarded with a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council in this call. The highly competitive research funding has been granted to 301 top scientists and scholars across Europe. With this support, worth in total €600 million, the new grantees will have a chance to build up their teams and have far-reaching impact  on a wide range of topics in physical sciences and engineering, life sciences, as well as social sciences and humanities.

The ERC Consolidator Grants are awarded to outstanding researchers of any nationality and age, with at least seven and up to twelve years of experience after PhD, and a scientific track record showing great promise. Research must be conducted in a public or private research organisation located in one of the EU Member States or Associated Countries. The funding (average of €2 million per grant), is provided for up to five years and mostly covers the employment of researchers and other staff to consolidate the grantees' teams.

Tomàs Marquès-Bonet (1975) earned his PhD in Biology at Pompeu Fabra University in 2007. He is currently director of the IBE and head of the Comparative Genomics group, an ICREA research professor at the UPF, and holds a dual appointment at the National Centre for Genomic Analysis (CNAG-CRG) and the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP).

More information here:  https://erc.europa.eu/news/erc-awards-over-600-million-euro-europes-top-researchers