ERC award for Matthew Grubb

Matthew Grubb has been awarded a prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). 

With this new award, the Centre for Developmental Neurobiology has a total of four ERC Awardees. The ERC Consolidator Grants are designed to support excellent Principal Investigators at the career stage at which they are  consolidating their own independent research team or programme. 

The funding, worth €2 million, will support research that aims to examine groundbreaking questions on the functional role of newly-generated neurons in the adult brain. Adult neurogenesis produces new neurons in particular areas of the mammalian brain throughout life. Because they undergo a transient period of heightened plasticity, these freshly-generated cells are believed to bring unique properties to the circuits they join – a continual influx of new, immature cells is believed to provide a level of plasticity not achievable by the mature, resident network alone. Using a combination of innovative approaches, Dr Grubb aims  to discover how plasticity in adult-born cells shapes information processing in neuronal circuits. 

Dr Grubb from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), said: ‘This is an amazing opportunity for us – we’ll use the Consolidator Grant to push our experiments in entirely new directions, to really start to understand what new cells can contribute to old circuits.’ 

To find out more about the European Research Council Grants, visit their website: https://erc.europa.eu