Six researchers based in Utrecht have each been awarded a €1.5 million Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC), Utrecht University announced on 3 September 2026. According to the university, the money lets them set up their own projects, build research teams and develop their scientific ideas. Four of the winners work at Utrecht University and two at UMC Utrecht, the university medical centre.

The ERC awarded 421 Starting Grants across Europe in this round, worth €705 million in total. A Starting Grant provides up to €1.5 million over a maximum of five years.

Two projects with a medical angle

At UMC Utrecht, Evita Wiegers leads a project called ECLIPSE. It combines and develops advanced MRI techniques to map lactate, a metabolic substance, inside brain tumours. The aim is to understand how tumours grow and possibly to predict earlier whether a therapy is working. The university says the method may also be usable for other cancers and for neurological disorders in which metabolism is altered. "This study provides many opportunities for personalized care," Wiegers said, according to the university.

Also at UMC Utrecht, Kimberly Siletti's project, ConStruct, asks how neurons and the connections between them influence each other's development. The team will work on the mouse visual system, selectively disrupting certain connections to see how neuronal development changes and which molecules are involved. In the longer term, the university says, the findings could inform research into neuropsychiatric, neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. This is basic research rather than a treatment.

Mathematics, society and law

In the Faculty of Science, Peter Koymans works on arithmetic statistics, a field that studies the structure of whole numbers. His project, on class groups, elliptic curves and Diophantine equations, is described as primarily theoretical, though the university notes possible uses including secure encryption. "We aim to create a comprehensive toolbox for gaining deeper insight into the underlying structures of integers," Koymans said. The university says he and a colleague provided the long-awaited proof of the Stevenhagen conjecture.

Deni Mazrekaj, in the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, will investigate why boys lag behind girls in education in virtually all European countries. Her project, AFAM-GAP, treats diverse family set-ups, such as same-sex parent families, stay-at-home parents, blended families and grandparent care, as a "natural laboratory". It will combine population registers from the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden with new surveys and interviews. "The aim is to understand which family mechanisms widen or narrow the educational gap between boys and girls, and which policy measures can help to close that gap," she said.

Her faculty colleague Yichen Rao leads CHAINS, which studies how Chinese e-commerce and AI platforms, including Temu, Shein, AliExpress and TikTok Shop, are changing work and entrepreneurship worldwide. It will use ethnographic research on small-business owners who rely on these platforms, looking at both the autonomy and the new dependence and insecurity they bring.

Olia Kanevskaia, of the Faculty of Law, Economics, Governance and Organisation, leads ConTraDiCT. It examines how the idea of "origin" in EU economic law can be rethought so that trade stays in line with international legal obligations, using EU trade with contested territories such as Israeli settlements and Western Sahara as examples. It combines legal analysis with empirical research, including how origin labels affect consumers. Kanevskaia described the project as offering "a groundbreaking framework" for understanding how EU economic law shapes commercial practice in politically sensitive regions; that assessment is hers and the university's, not an independent verdict.

What it means for Utrecht

The grants fund research, not local services, and results will take years. But they bring six funded research teams to the city's university and hospital, in fields from cancer imaging to education policy. The Utrechter Post will report on outcomes as they are published.