Professor Nektarios Tavernarakis, Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology of FORTH, was appointed as new member of the Scientific Council of the ERC. New members are selected by an independent Identification Committee, composed of six distinguished scientists appointed by the Commission. The scientific community was consulted in this process.

Alexandros Lappas, a chemical physicist and Research Director in the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) at FORTH, will be supported by the Fulbright Foundation under their 2016-17 Visiting Scholars program (www.fulbright.gr) with the purpose to lecture and conduct research in the United States.

Nektarios Tavernarakis, a researcher at the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), has recently been awarded for the second time the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Investigator Grant for his research proposal titled “MacroAutophagy and Necrotic Neurodegeneration in Ageing”.

Research at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, published today in the premier international scientific journal Nature, reveals an intricate molecular mechanism that coordinates the biogenesis and selective elimination of mitochondria, to regulate cellular energy homeostasis during ageing.

George Garinis, a Professor at the Department of Biology, University of Crete and an affiliated group leader at the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH), has recently been awarded the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant for his research proposal titled "Dissecting the Functional Role of Nucleotide Excision Repair in Mammals-DeFiNER."

IMBB researchers Dr. Nikos Kourtis and Dr. Vassiliki Nikoletopoulou, headed by Prof. Nektarios Tavernarakis, uncovered a universal and potent protective mechanism against neuronal necrosis.

A state-of-the art approach to enhance the resolution of non-invasive medical diagnosis techniques is to utilize nano-size materials which are delivered at the regions of interest and allow improved tissue contrast. For such applications, magnetic iron oxides are emerging as promising probes in the diagnosis of various diseases and especially in the area of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Researchers at the Department of Biomedical Research IMBB Ioannina revealed that growth factor signaling in cells integrates the response mechanism to the presence of unfolded proteins (Unfolded Protein Response, UPR) in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). This study shows that ER plays an important role in normal cell functions, such as signaling by growth factors, and is not limited to the adaptation of the cell to stress.

Phase separation in otherwise chemically homogenous, strongly correlated electron systems is a crucial parameter, leading to fascinating tunable functional properties, such as high-Tc superconductivity in cuprates and giant magnetoresistance in manganites.

A new distinction for FORTH comes from the European Research Council (ERC) which approved the research program submitted by Dr. Andreas Zezas, researcher of the Astrophysics Group at the Institute of Electronic Structure and LASER (IESL) of FORTH. The approved program is entitled: "Accreting binary populations in Nearby Galaxies: Observations and Simulations" (A-BINGOS), and was submitted in the first ERC "Consolidator Grants" call. The goal of the ERC Consolidator Grants is to "enable already independent excellent researchers to consolidate their own research teams and to develop their most innovative ideas". In this call were approved 312 programs out of 3637 submitted proposals (a success rate of 8.5%). The program A-BINGOS is one of the only 2 programs awarded to Greek Institutions, and the first one to be awarded to a Greek Astrophysicist.