Two NWO ECHO grants for Leiden Chemistry
Two excellent young chemists, Jeroen Codée and Sander van Kasteren, have received an ECHO grant for €260,000 from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). This funding will allow them to begin their research projects.
The funded projects
A fourth dimension for immunology
Sander van Kasteren In this proposal, new remedies will be developed which will enable us for the first time to answer the question of how quickly antigens are presented to the immune system. With this research Van Kasteren hopes to gain new fundamental insights into these complex, important processes which lie at the heart of immunity against pathogens and cancer.
A combined theoretical and experimental approach to understanding the stereoelectronic substituent effects in oscillations in the furan series
Jeroen Codée This proposal describes research into the effects of substituents on the reactivity and selectivity in coupling reactions between 5-ring carbohydrates. These effects, which play an important role in the chemistry of synthetic carbohydrates, will be investigated in computational as well as experimental ways in order to decipher them.
About ECHO grants
ECHO grants offer researchers the opportunity to investigate creative, high-risk ideas which could lay the foundations for future research.
ECHO-STIP grants are a specific incentive for newly appointed researchers in the field of so-called ‘chemical centres of gravity’, which the Breimer commission has established for each university in the Advice for the Implementation of the Sector Plan for Physics and Chemistry.
In total, NWO-CW received 169 proposals for ECHO grants, of which 16 received funding.