26 November, 2022
What is the ERC Starting Grant?
ERC grants are becoming more and more internationally recognized as awards for scientific excellence.
The ERC Starting Grants are designed to support excellent Principal Investigators at the career stage at which they are starting their own independent research team or program. Principal Investigators must demonstrate the ground-breaking nature, ambition, and feasibility of their scientific proposal. The grant funds the principal investigator for 5 years.
The funded projects are chosen among 3-4K projects and the acceptance rate usually lies around 9-15% based on the available funding. Therefore, it is a highly competitive funding program.
INPERSPACE
In the INPERSPACE project, Dr. Erkan Aydin and his team will focus on an emerging but extremely urgent challenge in the “new space era”: meeting the sharply increasing demand for space-grade photovoltaics in a cost-efficient manner. After the significant cost-reduction in rocket launching costs, photovoltaic requirements change from high-cost-low demand to low-cost-high demand in this new space era. Towards this goal, ultra-efficient multijunction perovskite-based tandem solar cells will be developed and realized in real space conditions. The potential outcomes of the project will make feasible several technological advancements for the benefit of humankind in the upcoming years. INPERSPACE is the very first project in Türkiye awarded ERC Grants in the frame of photovoltaic technologies. Also, with thisachievement, Dr. Erkan Aydin becomes the first researcher from abroad entitled to receive an ERC StG grant by jointly applying with a host in Türkiye.
INPERSPACE project will start in 2023 with a host institute in Europe.