Ben Berks awarded ERC Advanced Grant

Principal Investigator in Oxford’s Department of Biochemistry Professor Ben Berks has been awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council worth up to €2.5 million over a period of five years.

Most bacteria are enclosed by an outer membrane, which serves as their interface with the environment or host and forms the first line of defence against antibiotics and immune attacks. The ERC grant has been awarded to enable Berks and his group to investigate how this outer membrane is assembled in a group of bacteria that are abundant in the gut and oral cavity, and which play a vital role in human health.

Professor Berks says: ‘These bacteria depend on unusually complex proteins in their outer membrane that we have shown require special machinery to insert into and across the membrane. We will use state-of-the-art multi-disciplinary approaches to understand how these machines work.’

Professor Berks continues: `This award recognises the incredible effort and dedication of my group members and collaborators in opening up a new field of bacterial cell biology. I’m excited to continue exploring this fascinating research area with them, and I’m very grateful to the ERC for making this opportunity possible.’

The ERC Advanced Grants competition, part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme, is one of the most prestigious and competitive funding schemes in the EU. It gives senior researchers the opportunity to pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven projects that could lead to major scientific breakthroughs.

This year, the competition attracted 2,534 proposals, which were reviewed by panels of internationally renowned researchers. Approximately 11 % of proposals were selected for funding.