Two faculty members of the Institute of Civil Engineering (IIC) at ENAC have been awarded highly competitive European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grants 2025, reinforcing EPFL's strong performance in one of Europe's most prestigious research funding programs.Professors Michel Bierlaire and Dimitrios Lignos are among nine EPFL researchers to receive ERC Advanced Grants this year. The awards support ambitious, curiosity-driven research with the potential to deliver major scientific breakthroughs. Across Europe, only 9.6% of the 3,329 submitted proposals were selected for funding, while nearly 30% of EPFL's submissions were successful, underscoring the university's research excellence and the benefits of Switzerland's association with the Horizon Europe programme.Professor Michel Bierlaire, head of the Transportation and Mobility Laboratory (TRANSP-OR) received a €2.5 million grant for the five-year COBRA project (Optimization for Behavioral Response Analysis). The research aims to transform the way human behavior is modeled by combining combinatorial optimization with synthetic data. By creating realistic, privacy-preserving synthetic populations based on census and official data, the project will enable more accurate analyses of complex travel behavior and support improved transportation planning, mobility services, and public policy. The grant will fund a research team comprising four PhD students and two postdoctoral researchers.Professor Dimitrios Lignos, head of the Resilient Steel Structures Laboratory (RESSLab) and current Director of the Institute, was awarded €3.17 million for the DARE project (Unibody Buildings for Urban Resilience). Inspired by the unibody design principles used in the automotive and aerospace industries, the project seeks to develop fundamentally lighter and stiffer residential buildings capable of withstanding the overlay of earthquakes with aging due to environmental exposure over a building’s service life. By integrating steel and unexplored composite materials, the research also aims to improve energy efficiency by reducing heating and cooling demands. The funding will support a highly complementary research team including full-scale experiments of a prototype unibody building at the world’s largest earthquake simulator. DARE will deliver software suitable for the design of unibody buildings by relying on performance-based engineering principles.FundingERC Advanced Grants are awarded to established research leaders with outstanding scientific track records and support high-risk, high-gain projects that push the frontiers of knowledge. The success of the IIC researchers highlights EPFL's continued leadership in addressing major societal challenges through cutting-edge research in artificial intelligence, mobility, and resilient infrastructure.