Dr Colin J Akerman, an RCUK fellow in the Department of Pharmacology, has just been awarded a €1.3 million European Research Council (ERC) Young Investigator Grant over five years.  His grant is one of two in the Medical Sciences division and six in the University as a whole.  It’s understood that the overall success rate is in the region of 10%, though Oxford’s awards represent 27% of applications.

The ERC specifically encourage science which has the potential to be ground-breaking. Dr Akerman’s project will focus on the basic mechanisms underlying developmental neurogenesis and the formation of neural circuits. During brain development some cells, referred to as ‘progenitor’ cells, give birth to different neurons by successively dividing. Dr Akerman’s group have developed methods for observing individual neural progenitors and their progeny in the intact brain and will use these approaches to establish what controls progenitor cell divisions and the identity that they impose on their progeny.

Dr Akerman said: “This is a fantastic opportunity for my group to address some fundamental questions in developmental neurobiology. The nature of the ERC grant means that we will be able to tackle longer-term, challenging questions in the field and I am confident this will lead to some exciting science.”