Jing Tang’s ERC funded project develops machine-learning algorithms and computational tools to facilitate discovery of personalized drug combinations.

Each year we spend more than 100 billion euros on cancer medicine globally. However, many cancer drugs benefit at most 25% of the patients who take them. Cancer cells also tend to easily develop drug resistance.

Tang’s project aims to

1. develop methods for identifying patient groups that respond differently to chemotherapy
2. develop network modelling approaches to predict the most potential drug combinations for patients who are resistant to chemotherapy
3. validate predictions using a preclinical drug testing platform, and translate predicted drug combinations into treatment options together with clinical collaborators

Jing Tang’s research could help make cancer drugs more effective, safer and more affordable. The tools that Tang and his group are working on are intended to help clinicians and pharmaceutical companies bring more effective combinatorial therapies to cancer patients.

Project name and duration

Informatics approaches for the rational selection of personalized cancer drug combinations, 2017–2022.

Merja Voutilainen’s ERC-funded project examines a new treatment for ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and Parkinson’s disease. Voutilainen has discovered a new CDNF fragment that has already proven to have neurorestorative effects in animal models of ALS and Parkinson’s.

The main goals of Voutilainen’s project are to understand

• how CDNF fragment works in hiPSC-derived human motoneurons and dopamine neurons
• therapeutic effects of CDNF fragment in animal models of ALS and Parkinson’s.

As populations grow older, neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and ALS affect more and more people. There are currently no treatments for ALS or Parkinson’s that could halt the progression or cure the disease. Voutilainen’s research could provide one.

Neurotrophic factors (NTFs) are promising candidates for treating neurodegenerative diseases since they regulate the survival of neurons, neurite growth, and branching, and also protect neurons from injury and toxins. Currently, since NTFs cannot penetrate through the blood brain barrier (BBB), they are administered directly either into the brain or intrathecal space in ALS patients or the brain of PD patients.

CDNF fragment is an exceptionally powerful new drug candidate for Parkinson’s and ALS. CDNF fragment can cross through the BBB and can thus be safely administered peripherally. It is also easier and cheaper to produce than current drugs. CDNF fragment has the potential to be more effective than current NTF treatment. It could revolutionise the treatment of ALS and Parkinson’s.

Project name and duration

Elucidating therapeutic effects and mode of action of future trophic factors in ALS and Parkinson’s disease, FutureTrophicFactors, 2019–2024.

Kaius Sinnemäki’s ERC-funded project investigates how languages change in various social environments.

Sinnemäki’s project utilises datasets from 150 different languages, which makes it possible to compare how different types of languages have evolved in different circumstances. The project’s hypothesis is that language structure changes and develops partially according to its social environment.

Social environment can mean, for example, how large and multilingual the community using the language is, and the usual age of language learners.

The project has two primary goals:

1. To develop new methods which can be used to compare contexts of language use and the structures of languages with each other.
2. To determine whether substantially different languages change in similar ways when similar changes occur in the environments where they are used. For instance, if many adults learn a particular language as their second language, does inflection tend to become increasingly simplified in the language?

The methods developed in Sinnemäki’s project will enable a new kind of research on language adaptation and variation. The project promotes linguistic equality and increases our understanding of how much people living in different societies around the world have in common with one another.

Project name and duration

Linguistic Adaptation: Typological and Sociolinguistic Perspectives to Language Variation, 2019–2023

Jaakko Tahkokallio’s ERC funded project examines the liturgical books of parish churches in the Kingdom of Sweden ca 1150–1500, and how the books were manufactured. The project also sheds light on the international networks of medieval book production.

Tahkokallio’s source material consists of medieval parchment fragments. These fragments are pages torn from medieval books and reused as record covers by the tax officials in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The project has two main goals:

1. Establish a general understanding of the book selection of parish churches and its development in the medieval Kingdom of Sweden. A prerequisite for this is to understand the mechanism of book recycling in the 16th and 17th centuries.
2. Use case studies to gain information about how and in what circumstances the books of the parish churches were manufactured. Were the manufacturers clergymen or craftsmen? Where were books imported from? How local was book manufacturing?

This research project helps understand a medieval advancement, which profoundly shaped European society: the commercialisation of the book and its transformation into a part of everyday life. Understanding the history of the book is especially important now, as we are living in the midst of the greatest transformation of information technology since the invention of printing.

Project name and duration

Books of the Medieval Parish Church, 2021–2025.

Federico Bianchi’s ERC funded project examines the aerosol makeup of our atmosphere as it would have been before industrialisation. We know a lot about the atmosphere today, but very little about the atmosphere 300 years ago.

Bianchi studies pre-industrial aerosols by organising intensive measurements in remote, preindustrial-like environments like the Arctic and Siberia. Bianchi’s team will combine data from the field campaigns with laboratory experiments to provide ground-breaking, new understanding of the impact of present and future aerosol on climate.

The main goals of the project are to:

1. identify the mechanism that drives formation of aerosol particles in remote and pristine areas with little or no human activity
2. understand and quantify the effect of the particle formation process in the pre-industrial era.

Bianchi’s project will deepen our understanding of historical climate change. This in turn will provide tools for more accurate estimates of natural aerosol formation, and more accurate climate models.

Project name and duration

Chasing pre-industrial aerosols, 2020–2025.

Katri Korpela’s ERC-funded project investigates the intestinal microbiota of children by combining methods of population ecology with analyses in molecular biology. The project collects and analyses faecal samples and food diaries from children. The samples are analysed for microbial DNA, RNA and metabolites.

The project aims to determine precisely which factors affect the functioning and composition of the gut microbiota in small children, and how the microbiota affects children’s health. The goal is to learn to modify the gut microbiota in a health-promoting direction.

The results will make it possible to accurately determine the role of each individual microbe in the infant gut and how various factors affect the infant gut microbiota as an ecosystem. This knowledge will enable the design of methods that can be used to detect and fix potential defects in the development of the gut microbiota. One of the most typical factors that disturb the development of the microbiota in children is antibiotic courses given to the majority of children during their first years of life. 

Name and duration of the project

MICROECO, 2023–2027

Marja Vierros’ ERC funded project studies how the Greek language was used and how it changed in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, based on the surviving corpus of documentary papyri.

Vierros’ project focuses on turning the exceptional body of written Greek that survives from Ancient Egypt into a digital corpus that serves linguistic studies far into the future. The material consists of large amount of texts that include both everyday and administrational language. Studying this material will shed new light on how Ancient Greek developed as a language in the postclassical era (ca. 300 BCE to 700 CE), and how it varied regionally and in different social contexts.

The project’s main aims are to:

1. provide new, more exact analyses on the phonological, morphological and syntactic developments of Greek in Egypt.
2. make possible for scholars to use the texts written on papyri and potsherds dynamically for quantitative linguistic studies in digital form. In turn, the searches and their results build up towards a new descriptive grammar of postclassical Greek.

The results of Vierros’ project will enhance our understanding of how languages function and shape the communication practices in a multilingual community, where the language groups are unequal in size and the languages have different social statuses. The project’s methodology on how to bring fragmentary corpus of an ancient language into a form that can be studied with several computer linguistic methods is expected to be of interest also to many language specialists.

Project name and duration

Digital Grammar of Greek Documentary Papyri (PapyGreek), 2018–2023.

Mikko Sipilä’s ERC-funded project investigates how the gases present in the atmosphere form new aerosol particles which affect cloud properties and, consequently, the climate.

Previously, particle formation has been investigated with appropriate accuracy only in laboratory conditions. Sipilä’s group looked into the phenomenon on the Atlantic coast, but evidence from other areas in the world is lacking.

The main goal of the project is to develop new techniques for detecting and measuring

• Particle precursor vapours
• Oxidants
• Newly formed clusters.

Sipilä’s research findings help to understand the impact of human activity on the climate. With new measuring techniques and equipment, researchers will be able to produce increasingly accurate climate models and predictions.

Project name and duration

Molecular steps of gas-to-particle conversion: From oxidation to precursors, clusters and secondary aerosol particles, 2017–2022.

Monica Passananti’s ERC funded project examines the occurrence of nanoplastics in the environment, their reactivity in surface waters and in the atmosphere, and how nanoplastics may disrupt ecosystems.

The project’s main aim is to develop a method to sample and analyse nanoplastics in the environment. Until now, such methodologies don’t existent.

Passananti’s research findings can in the long run be used to take informed decisions on regulation of the use of plastics. Plastic pollution is a global problem, as small pieces of plastic have been found even in the most remote areas of the Earth.

Project name and duration

NaPuE – Impact of Nanoplastics Pollution on aquatic and atmospheric Environments, 2021–2025.

Josephine Hoegaerts’ ERC funded project examines the history of political speech and the issue of “voice” in 19th-century politics.

Hoegaerts’ project focuses on the role sound has played in making and breaking political careers, in political decision making, and in the exchange of knowledge and information between the colony and the metropole in the 19th century.

The project has two main aims:

1. Research and explain how physical and learned vocal characteristics – such as pitch, timbre and accent – helped or hindered a speaker in influencing political decisions. What made someone a good, convincing speaker?
2. Examine how colonial contact and exchange changed cultural practices in both the "metropole" and the colony. E.g. how the discussion and debating cultures of Bengali and Muslim communities influenced British and French political voices and vice versa.

Hoegaerts’ project will provide new understanding of how political speech, debate and reporting have developed over time. This in turn gives us unique insight into how modern democracies work or collapse.

Project name and duration

Vocal Articulations of Parliamentary Identity and Empire (CALLIOPE), 2018–2023.

Christian Hakulinen’s ERC-funded project investigates the effects of mental disorders on social networks. 

Hakulinen’s focus is particularly on how mental disorders affect the wellbeing and socioeconomic resources of family members and friends. Hakulinen will also investigate the temporal duration of these effects. 

The project’s primary goals are to

1. Investigate how mental disorders in children affect their parents’ wellbeing and socioeconomic resources
2. Examine the effect of mental disorders on the wellbeing and socioeconomic resources of the spouse throughout their life span
3. Study the effects of mental disorders on social networks, and their duration.

Hakulinen’s ERC-funded project is based on comprehensive Finnish registry datasets that encompass all people who have lived in Finland since 1994. It has the potential to considerably expand knowledge on the broader effects of mental disorders on social networks. In his prior studies, Hakulinen has demonstrated how mental disorders that require hospital care experienced in adolescence and early adulthood are connected with low income, poor education and unemployment over the life span of individuals.
 

Name and duration of the project

Effects of mental disorders on the wellbeing and prosperity of family members and friends, 2022–2027.

Enrico Di Minin’s ERC funded project investigates the international trade in wildlife. Di Minin’s group uses digital data sources, such as social media data, in combination with machine learning and natural language processing and market analyses.

Di Minin’s project aims to mobilize new data to investigate the global patterns and trends of the international trade in wildlife. Information about these is currently largely missing.

The main objectives are to:

1. automate digital media content analysis about species and products involved in the international trade in wildlife
2. identify areas of high pressure on biodiversity caused by the international trade in wildlife
3. understand the patterns of supply and demand and the flow of goods along the supply chain of wildlife trade
4. assess how market forces shape the international trade in wildlife

Trade in wildlife is booming online. By using Big Data mined from digital platforms, Di Minin’s project aims to identify which species and wildlife products are traded and why. Di Minin’s project also tries to identify the global hotspots for wildlife trade and understand how market forces shape the trade. This information can then be used to inform conservation decision-making both globally and locally.

Project name and duration

Quantifying the global patterns and trends of the illegal wildlife trade: from artificial intelligence to financial market analysis (WILDTRADE), 2019–2024.

Emmi Helle’s ERC-funded project investigates the effects of maternal diseases and genetics on the development of the heart of the embryo and foetus during early pregnancy.

Congenital heart defects are the most common structural abnormalities in newborns, occurring in roughly one in 100 individuals. Congenital heart defects are known to be partly hereditary, but their inheritance is complex. The events associated with the early development of the heart that result in heart defects are still fairly poorly known.

The main goals of Helle’s project are to:

• Produce more information on how the genes and diseases of the expectant mother alter intrauterine conditions in high-risk pregnancies and how these conditions result in structural abnormalities of the offspring’s heart
• Determine whether mothers with cardiovascular diseases have an increased risk of having offspring with congenital heart defects
• Find ways to reduce the risk of heart defects in the offspring as well as to improve the long-term health of both the expectant mother and the foetus

The research dataset is composed of national registry data, Finnish biobank samples and data from the FinnGen project.

Helle has assembled a team with diverse expertise in registry-based studies, genetic research as well as cell and molecular biology. The ERC-funded project combines this expertise with Finland’s globally unique registry, biobank and genetic data.

Emmi Helle is currently working as clinical researcher funded by the Academy of Finland.

Project name and duration:

FINNPEDHEART: Unraveling the etiology of congenital heart defects – the role of maternal genetics and cardiovascular disease as a risk factor, 2023–2028

Soile Ylivuori’s ERC-funded project investigates the construction of scientific knowledge in 18th-century Europe and the Atlantic World, employing as a case study the experiences of patients in the utilisation of electricity in medicine.

The source material for the study is composed of patients’ personal descriptions as well as scholarly and popular texts on electrotherapies. These will be investigated to establish the role of embodied experiences – a topic which has thus far received little scholarly attention – in the production of scientific knowledge, as well as how gender, class and other intersecting categories of distinction affect the process of constructing experiential knowledge.

The project has three primary goals:

1. Establishing a general understanding of the transnational history of medical electricity (with London, Paris, Berlin and New York as case studies).
2. Studying patients’ embodied experiences of medical electricity and examining how, among other factors, the gender, class, age and racial identity of patients affected on the one hand their experiences of electrotherapy and, on the other, the transition of these experiences into scientific knowledge
3. Comparing popular and scholarly epistemological notions on the interaction between electricity and the human body. How were the nature of electricity and its effects on the body explained?

Through these goals, the research project aims to expand the international study of the history of science and knowledge towards embodied and experiential types of knowledge by utilising methods of historical research as well as approaches from phenomenology and cognitive science. The project provides an important historical perspective on how knowledge we today often consider objective is constructed according to biased, often white, middle-class, educated and male perspectives.

Project name and duration

Medical Electricity, Embodied Experiences, and Knowledge Construction in Europe and the Atlantic World, c. 1740–1840 (ELBOW) (1 September 2022–1 September 2027)

Mari Pihlatie’s ERC funded project studies the nature of methane emissions from trees.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that significantly contributes to climate change. Recent discoveries demonstrate that trees emit methane and by doing so they affect the methane budget of forests. As forests cover ca 30% of the global land area, understanding this newly discovered source of methane is crucial for a better understanding of the global methane cycle.

The main aims of the project are to:

1. create unique continuous data series of how the methane fluxes from tree canopies and stems vary during different times of year and times of day
2. build and use a unique automated chamber systems in controlled conditions to reveal processes and drivers of aerobic methane emissions from boreal trees
3. utilize the newly established process understanding of methane emission from trees to build a process-based soil-tree-atmosphere methane model.

Pihlatie’s research can revolutionize our understanding of the methane cycling in forests today and in the future. Understanding of the role of trees in methane exchange of forests will help creating more accurate climate models, and decrease the uncertainties in global methane budget.

Project name and duration

From processes to modelling of methane emissions from trees (MEMETRE), 2018–2023.

Teppo Särkämö’s ERC funded project explores how the human brain processes music, especially singing, and how normal ageing and age-related neurological disorders, such as aphasia and Alzheimer’s disease, affect this.

Särkämö’s project uses modern behavioural and neuroimaging methods to deepen our understanding of music in the ageing, recovering, and degenerating brain. Särkämö’s team seeks to optimize the therapeutic use of music in supporting healthy ageing and enhancing wellbeing and functioning in aphasia and Alzheimer’s disease.

The project has three main aims:

1. Explore how the neural networks that govern the processing of speech, music, and singing change during normal ageing as well as after neural damage and neurodegeneration.
2. Explain which mechanisms drive the preservation of singing ability in aphasia and of music-evoked emotions and memories in Alzheimer’s disease.
3. Determine if choir singing can have long-term positive effects in normal ageing and in aphasia rehabilitation.

Särkämö’s project will provide new systems-level understanding of the structural and functional relationship between singing, speech and music in the ageing brain. The project helps explain why music has such therapeutic power, and why it promotes well-being in both a normal ageing brain and a brain with common age-related neurological disorders. This can lead to the development of novel music-based rehabilitation methods, which are motivating, cost-effective, and widely applicable.

Project name and duration

Preservation and Efficacy of Music and Singing in Ageing, Aphasia, and Alzheimer’s Disease (PREMUS), 2019–2023.

Anniina Färkkilä’s ERC-funded project investigates how ovarian cancer cells manage to hide from the body’s immune system and how these mechanisms can be utilised in the development of new, increasingly effective therapies.

The project examines how gene mutations, the location of individual cells and cell–cell interaction, as well as the expression of genes in different parts of tumours affect the prognosis and the treatment responses in ovarian cancer. Research findings can be used to develop new immuno- and combination therapies for epithelial ovarian cancer, a common and the most lethal gynaecologic cancer.

The project’s primary goals are to

• Investigate how tumour genetic mutations modify the mechanisms for hiding from the immune system
• Determine, through spatial single-cell analyses carried out on tissue specimens, how the location of cells and their mutual interaction affect the immune system
• Reveal how these mechanisms can be targeted with new drug combinations using micro-tumours, or organoids, derived from the patient’s tumours.

According to the previous findings of Färkkilä’s research group, ovarian cancer can be accurately classified on the basis of gene mutations. These mutations also dictate how the immune system detects the cancer cells. Consequently, certain immunotherapies are more effective in some patients with ovarian cancer than in others.

In the ERC-funded project, researchers have the opportunity to study individual ovarian cancer cells and their functioning with an unprecedented precision. The findings can be used to identify new immunotherapies as well as improve the treatment and prognosis of ovarian cancer patients. The findings will also make it possible to target the new therapies to those patients who will benefit the most from them.

Färkkilä is currently working as clinical researcher funded by the Academy of Finland.

Name and duration of the project

Precision oncology of spatial immune escape mechanisms in ovarian cancer (SPACE), 2023–2027

Andrea Ganna’s ERC funded project studies how to provide personalised risk assessment of cardiovascular diseases using artificial intelligence. Ganna and his team will integrate health data and genetic information on a nationwide scale to achieve their goal.

The main goals of the project are to:

1. create new artificial intelligence approaches that revolutionize the existing approaches to primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases
2. perform a clinical study of their new approach in 2 800 individuals to test if it works.

Ganna’s project seeks to create an approach to provide risk assessment of cardiovascular diseases before an individual even steps into the doctor’s office. Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in Europe. Current prediction models have major limitations, e.g. requiring time-consuming clinical measurements.

Project name and duration

A nationwide artificial intelligence assessment of cardiometabolic risk, 2020–2025.

Eeva Luhtakallio’s ERC-funded project investigates how European young people utilise images as tools of societal participation.

Luhtakallio’s project analyses the images shared by young people on social media, as well as their practices of photography, sharing images and commenting in four European countries: Finland, Germany, France and Portugal. The project examines what kind of ways of politicisation and influencing are encompassed and produced by increasing visuality. The project combines ethnography with AI-assisted mining of image data.

The project’s primary goals are

1. Conceptualising visual politicisation
2. Methodologically combining ethnography and data mining
3. Producing comparative observations on current – and emerging – ways of political influencing and themes among the young in different European contexts

Research conducted under Luhtakallio’s project will advance our understanding of what political participation and influencing will be like in future European democracies. The results can also help identify solutions to crises of democracy.

Name and duration of the project

Imagi(ni)ng Democracy: European Youth Becoming Citizens by Visual Participation (ImagiDem), 2019–2024.

Jarno Mäkelä’s ERC funded project studies how bacteria can withstand severe temperature changes. We still don’t know how bacteria can grow across large temperature ranges. While many multi-cellular organisms maintain constant internal temperature, microbes lack homeothermic regulation which subjects them to fluctuations in environmental temperature.

To understand these processes, the project utilizes super-resolution microscopy that allows direct visualization of the activity of thousands of individual proteins inside individual living cells.

The main goals of the project are to:

• Measure how intracellular dynamics and organization changes with temperatures
• Investigate how bacteria growing at extreme temperatures differ from mesophilic organisms growing at moderate temperatures 
• Uncover the mechanisms how bacteria overcome the detrimental effects of temperature fluctuations

The project will contribute to our understanding how environmental changes affect microbes, which is essential for achieving an environmentally sustainable future. We can also use these new insights to develop more energy-efficient, environment-friendly biotechnological processes.

Project name and duration

Single-molecule visualization of temperature adaptation in sub-cellular dynamics and organization across bacteria (TEMPADAPT), 2023–2028

Samu Niskanen’s ERC funded project studies what it meant to publish new literary works in the Middle Ages, before the introduction of print in Europe.

Niskanen’s project examines how Latin authors published their original works during the Middle Ages, c.1000–1500. The project’s hypothesis is that publication strategies were not a constant but were liable to change, and that different social, literary, institutional, and technical environments fostered different approaches to publishing.

The main aims of the project are to:

1. Establish what was involved in the process of publishing in the Middle Ages, and whether the process varied depending on the environment and situation in which new literary works were released for publication.
2. Investigate what authors and their networks did to prepare for circulating their writings, in a culture where books were copied slowly and singly by hand.

Niskanen’s project contributes to our perception of medieval Latin literature and of the dynamics of medieval networking. The project deepens our understanding of how learned topics such as theology, philosophy, medicine, science and history have been communicated through time.

Project name and duration

Medieval Publishing from c.1000 to 1500 (MedPub), 2017–2022.

In her ERC-funded project, Maria Lasonen-Aarnio investigates epistemology and normativity: what makes beliefs, actions and choices good? How should beliefs be assessed in the first place?

Lasonen-Aarnio is developing a new epistemological based on distinguishing between successful and competent beliefs. Success is knowing, while competence, in terms of knowledge, denotes positive tendencies and customs of forming and shaping beliefs. Competence does not always lead to knowledge, but neither does knowledge always stem from competence.

The framework presented in the project carries on the externalist tradition: the goodness of beliefs is not about reconciling them with internal mental phenomena. Instead, competence too is perceived through knowledge founded on an appropriate relationship between the mind and the external world. One of the project’s main goals is to demonstrate how this framework will solve a number of problems central to epistemology.

Although the development of the epistemological framework is the primary objective, another goal is to apply it to societally topical phenomena, such as epistemic bubbles, structures that produce distorted evidence and the way in which our attention shapes our mental state.

Name and duration of the project

Competence and Success in Epistemology and Beyond, 2018–2022.