Prof. Ahluwalia receives a 2nd ERC-PoC grant

posted in: Award | 0

Congratulations to our PI, assoc. prof. Balpreet Singh Ahluwalia, on his second Proof of Concept (PoC) grant from the European Research Council (ERC).

The project titled “Chip-based nanoscopy: an affordable, multi-modal and high-throughput super-resolution
imaging platform” in short, “ChipNano”, has been awarded € 150.000,- with the aim of exploring the industrial production of waveguide chips in medium-to-high volumes for nanoscopy applications. The project will hire an application scientist and will run in close co-operation with the spin-off company Chip NanoImaging (CNI), located in Tromsø, Norway.

The competition for PoC grants is though. Only successful ERC-awarded scientists are allowed to participate. They all compete for funding to implement top-notch ideas with the potential of changing the world we live in. In total, prof. Ahluwalia has received three ERC grants, the first of them a Starting grant in 2013, followed by a PoC grant in 2017, and this current PoC grant. Not only prof. Ahluwalia obtained a second ERC-PoC this time, but he was the only researcher to receive such a prestigious grant in Norway in 2020. Congratulations to prof. Ahluwalia and his team on such an outstanding achievement!

 

More about the ERC:

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. It offers four core grant schemes: Starting, Consolidator, Advanced and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between grantees’ pioneering research and early phases of its commercialisation.

 

Relevant links:

Official news at the UiT’s web portal (in Norwegian). Click here.

Balpreet’s interview at Khrono (in Norwegian). Click here.

Balpreet’s interview by the local newspaper in Tromsø (in Norwegian). Click here.