Malaria has halved since 2000 (approximately 500,000 lives saved every year), with 80% of the reduction attributable to the use of insecticides. However, insecticide resistance is at a critical tipping point in public health, with some mosquito populations showing resistance to all insecticides and the strength and impact of this resistance is escalating every year. As a result, for the first time after many years, malaria cases were increased in several places after 2015, despite the far more intense use of insecticides.

Giorgos Chamilos, Researcher at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology of the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH) and Associate Professor at School of Medicine, University of Crete, is awarded a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC).

George A, Garinis, Professor of Genetics at the department of Biology at the University of Crete and affiliated group leader at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB) of the Foundation of Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH), is the recipient of the prestigious Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel International Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The official award ceremony will take place in Bamberg, Germany in March 2020.

ERC Starting Grants are awarded to early-career researchers of any nationality with two to sevenyears of experience since completion of the PhD (or equivalent degree) and a scientific track recordshowing great promise. This grant is a funding scheme that supports young talented research leaders to gain independence and build their own research team in Europe.

Dr. Panayiota Poirazi, a Research Director at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology of FORTH, is the recipient of a prestigious Einstein Visiting Fellowship of the Einstein Foundation Berlin.

Computational modeling in the Poirazi lab (www.dendrites.gr) at IMBB-FORTH (www.imbb.forth.gr) shed new light on how Fast Spiking Basket Cells – a central subtype of GABAergic inhibitory neurons- integrate their incoming signals, taking advantage of their recently discovered dendritic non-linearities. The article, entitled: “Challenging the point neuron dogma: FS basket cells as 2-stage nonlinear integrators” authored by IMBB researchers Alexandra Tzilivaki, George Kastellakis and Panayiota Poirazi was recently published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

Associate Professor Xenofontas Dimitropoulos, Affiliated Researcher to ICS-FORTH, ERC Starting Grant holder, and his team, the INSPIRE research group, were awarded their second ERC Proof of Concept grant for the RAVEN project. The ERC Proof of Concept Grants aim to maximize the value of the excellent research already supported by ERC, by funding further work (i.e., activities which were not scheduled to be funded by the original ERC frontier research grant) in order to explore the innovation potential of ideas arising from these projects. Proof of Concept Grants are therefore on offer only to Principal Investigators whose proposals draw substantially on their ERC funded research.

George A. Garinis, Researcher at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology of the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH) and Professor of Genetics at the Department of Biology, University of Crete, is one of just 62 scientists from across Europe that recently secured funding from the innovation-supporting Proof of Concept Programme of the European Research Council (ERC).

Nektarios Tavernarakis, Research Director at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB) of the Foundation of Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH), and Professor at the Medical School of the University of Crete was elected a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Athens.

George A, Garinis, Professor at the department of Biology of the University of Crete and affiliated group leader at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB) of the Foundation of Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH) was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization.