ERC Advanced Grant for Silvia Arber

This year's recipients of the prestigious Advanced Grants from the European Research Council (ERC) have been announced today. The neurobiologist Prof. Silvia Arber, research group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Institute and the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, is among the awardees. Her funded project aims at understanding how brainstem neurons interact in the motor system to control generation and learning of body movements. The goal of the ERC Advanced Grants is to support established, leading principal investigators to pursue a groundbreaking and high-risk project. As all ERC grants, they are in high demand and therefore very competitive. This year, of the 746 research proposals that were submitted in the Life Sciences domain, 62 (8%) were selected for funding, including 7 in the field of neuroscience. Silvia Arber is an expert in the field of motor circuit function, and investigates the neuronal circuits controlling motor behavior.