Four researchers from the University of Basel receive ERC Consolidator Grants

From artificial intelligence to memory and from gene regulation to treatments for blindness: four projects at the University of Basel will each receive around EUR 2 million over a five-year period to pave the way for new discoveries. The four successful researchers will be able to expand their own research group, pursue long-term projects and foster international collaborations.

After a several-year hiatus, the calls for proposals for ERC Consolidator Grants reopened to researchers in Switzerland in 2025. 3121 researchers from across Europe applied for one of these grants. Only 349 applications were ultimately successful.

Physicists and mathematicians use equations to describe the world and better understand it. Even though these mathematical models are already difficult for outsiders to comprehend, models based on artificial intelligence that are trained using huge amounts of data are far more complex and much less transparent, even for experts. Although they sometimes deliver good results, it is often impossible to understand why they work and where their limits lie.

Computer scientist Professor Ivan Dokmanić wants to change this with his ERC project. His research team at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science will work on new AI building blocks to make AI for science more efficient, stable and easy to interpret. The team then aims to put them to use to model complex systems across domains: in bioimaging—to help visualize cells at near-atomic resolution—and in Earth science, to improve our understanding of earthquakes.

Even in our rapidly changing world, some facts remain constant: fire is hot, and five plus five equals ten. At the same time, our memory may sometimes need to recall an alternative path to avoid “roadworks”. Our brain, therefore, has to store certain memories in a stable and write-protected way, while keeping others malleable and easy to overwrite. Professor Flavio Donato at the University of Basel’s Biozentrum is investigating exactly how this works.

Together with his research team, Donato has discovered that there are two important types of nerve cells in the hippocampus – a region of the brain that is central to memory. One type is formed early in embryonic development and prevents memories from being easily overwritten. The other type develops later and keeps memories adaptable. As part of the ERC project, the researchers will investigate how these nerve cells interact and how they regulate whether memories exist in a stable or malleable state, including through tests on rats and mice. The findings may broaden our understanding of conditions where memories are too stable or too flexible, such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and learning difficulties.

Across the animal kingdom, sex chromosomes are surprisingly dynamic, having arisen independently hundreds of times. Since they occur in different copy numbers between males and females, organisms must adjust gene expression to ensure balanced activity. For example in humans, the genes on the X chromosome are present in two copies in women (two X chromosomes) and in only one copy in men (only one X and one Y chromosome). This is where “dosage compensation” comes into play, ensuring that the same amount of gene product is produced regardless of whether there is one or two copies. Behind this lie mechanisms of gene regulation that are based on chemical modifications and packaging of the DNA into a structure termed chromatin.

With her ERC project, Professor Claudia Keller Valsecchi is investigating the evolution of dosage compensation in the animal kingdom. Anopheles mosquitoes, for example, have developed their own mechanism for it. Using this example, but also considering the entire animal kingdom, the research team wants to shed light on how the mechanisms of dose compensation came about, which aspects have been preserved during evolution, and how new, species-specific solutions are emerging. As the project examines both sexes of different animal species, it also promises new insights into differences between males and females with regard to gene regulation mechanisms.

Vision loss is one of the most feared health problems. There is often a genetic cause, such as with macular degeneration, in which sensory cells in the center of the field of vision die off. As yet, there is no treatment for blindness. Professor Bence György and his team at the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB), which is affiliated with the University of Basel, are developing gene therapies that aim to restore vision or prevent vision loss.

In his ERC project, György aims to treat blindness-causing diseases using a precision gene editing tool, called base editing. Base editors are molecular technologies for rewriting the sequence of genes in living cells and thereby correcting defects. One of the aims of the project is to create improved ways of rewriting genes in patients’ retinas in a targeted manner, without undesirable side effects. The focus is on frequent mutations involved in macular degeneration. Another aim is to use this technique to develop a treatment for corneal blindness.

Additional details about the grant recipients and their projects can be found in the news sections of the Biozentrum, Mathematics and Computer Science, and IOB departments.