2011-09-14
SLU’s first research grant from the European Research Council
Claudia Köhler, SLU, with members of her research group in the background. Photo: Jenny Svennås-Gillner
Claudia Köhler from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences is one out of 15 researchers at Swedish institutions that have been awarded starting grants by the European Research Council (ERC) in its fourth 'ERC Starting Grant' competition for emerging research leaders.
The starting grants are awarded to excellent young researchers with the potential to become world leading in their research fields. So far 480 out of 4080 applicants in this year´s Starting Grant call have received funding. Claudia Köhler is the first SLU researcher to receive an ERC grant.
Claudia Köhler is a professor in molecular plant cell biology at Uppsala BioCenter at SLU since October 2010, and she was previously working at the ETH Zürich in Switzerland. Her special interest concerns the genetics of seed development.
– I have received approximately 1.5 million Euros in total for five years, says Claudia Köhler. My research investigates the driving forces behind an evolutionary process called polyploidization, the reason why so many of our cultivated crop plants have more than the original number of chromosome sets. I want to explore the obstacles that prevent crosses between plant species with different ploidy – it is for example very difficult to transfer valuable traits from wild diploid plants to polyploid relatives among agricultural plants.
Written by:
David Stephansson