Two scientists at EPFL’s School of Life Sciences, James Priestley and Florian Schueder, have been awarded Starting Grants from the European Research Council (ERC).The ERC Starting Grants are a highly prestigious funding scheme managed by the European Research Council (ERC) designed for active early-career researchers with a promising scientific track record who want to pursue long-term, groundbreaking, and high-risk frontier research projects in Europe. Each grant covers up to €1.5 million per project for a maximum of 5 years (with the possibility of up to an additional €1 million to €2 million for specific startup equipment or global relocation.The ERC has announced the Starting Grant awardees from the 2026 round of applications. Four projects have been awarded at EPFL, two of which are from researchers from the School of Life Sciences: James Priestley and Florian Schueder.ERC announcementJames PriestleyProject: DYNAGRAMHow does a memory trace form in the brain? Learning induces rapid plasticity in neural circuits that is thought to allocate specific neurons to encode particular memories, referred to as memory engrams. This process is studied indirectly by exploiting patterns of activity-dependent gene expression such as Fos, but it remains largely unknown how these genetic markers correspond with changes in the underlying neural activity code during memory formation.DYNAGRAM aims to directly observe the neural dynamics and plasticity of engrams in the hippocampus, a central circuit for autobiographical memory. This project will combine in vivo large-scale neural recordings, genetic tagging and perturbation of engrams, and mouse virtual reality systems in order to study how the neural representations and circuit structure of engrams evolve during rapid memory formation and memory recall.“Our goal is to link the genesis of engrams to concrete, rapid cellular plasticity mechanisms in hippocampal circuits, which will be fundamental to demarcating the neural substrate of specific memories”, says Priestley. “By uncovering these dynamics, we will enable future work to study the longterm storage and evolution of memory engrams, and how these processes are compromised during aging and neurodegenerative disease.”Florian SchuederProject: MAPOne of the next frontiers in the life sciences is to map not only the composition but also the spatial organization of entire transcriptomes, genomes, and proteomes at molecular resolution.In this context, the Molecular Atlas Project (MAP) aims to develop a new generation of microscopy technologies capable of revealing the molecular composition and organization of biological samples in unprecedented detail. By combining advanced fluorescence microscopy with programmable DNA-based probes, MAP will enable the visualization and identification of large numbers of different molecules directly within cells and tissues. Ultimately, MAP aims to create molecular-scale maps of cells and tissues, revealing not only which molecules are present, but where they are and how they interact.“MAP aims to provide an unprecedented view of the molecular organization of life in situ,” says Florian Schueder. “By mapping RNA and proteins at single-molecule resolution, the project will reveal how individual molecules are spatially arranged and interact within cells and tissues. This could fundamentally advance our understanding of biological complexity, from differences between individual cells to the organization of entire tissues. By extending spatial omics beyond predefined molecular targets, MAP could also enable the discovery of previously inaccessible molecular species, variants, and functional states and directly link them to their spatial context.”