Two St John's Fellows awarded ERC Consolidator Grants

The ERC's Consolidator Grants support highly promising mid-career scientists of any nationality and any field with building a research team at an eligible host organisation. Consolidator Grants award around €2 million for projects typically lasting 5 years. Awardees must have 7-12 years of highly promising postdoctoral experience plus an excellent research proposal.

The ERC received 3,121 applications for the 2025 call, of which 11.2% were successful. The University of Oxford received more grants than any other institution in the UK, with eleven grantees.

Armin Lak, LearningTrajectories

The LearningTrajectories project is led by Armin Lak, Associate Professor of Neuroscience at the Department of Physiology, Anatomy, and Genetics (DPAG) and Tutorial Fellow in Pre-Clinical Medicine at St John's. The project seeks to understand neuronal circuits underlying individual learning trajectories.

Many abilities such as playing football or choosing food from a restaurant menu are learned. Different individuals learn in drastically diverse ways. However, the brain signals underlying individual diversity in learning remain unknown. LearningTrajectories aims to address this fundamental knowledge gap by monitoring neuronal activity throughout the whole process of learning, from naïve to expert. The results may also help us to understand conditions where people struggle to learn.

Many congratulations, Armin!

James Maynard, PraDa

PraDa (New structures in primes and Diophantine approximation) is led by James Maynard, Professor of Number Theory at the Mathematical Institute and Supernumerary Fellow in Mathematics at St John’s College.

Prime numbers are fundamental objects in pure mathematics. Their importance isn’t simply theoretical; many critical computer algorithms rely on assumptions about the distribution of primes. Despite this, and thousands of years of study, many of the basic questions about primes remain unsolved. The PraDa project will develop new mathematical tools to understand long-standing questions on prime numbers.

‘This project excites me because it aims to tackle some of the most central and notorious problems in pure mathematics,’ said Professor Maynard. ‘The long-term funding will help to maintain Oxford's position as a leading centre worldwide for such questions, and help attract the strongest young researchers to come and work in Oxford.’

5 ERC grants have now been awarded to St John's mathematicians within the last 10 years, a remarkable achievement about which the College is very proud.