Professor Yimon Aye awarded European Research Council Advanced Grant

Pembroke Fellow in Organic Chemistry, Yimon Aye, is one of seven researchers at the University of Oxford awarded Advanced Grants from the European Research Council. Each grant is worth up to €2.5 million over a period of five years.

An incredibly competitive funding scheme in the EU, The ERC Advanced Grants competition, part of the EU’s Horizon programme, allows senior researchers to pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven projects that could lead to major scientific breakthroughs. Professor Yimon’s proposal was chosen from 2,534 proposals by panels of internationally renowned researchers. Only 281 (11%) of proposals were selected for funding.

Professor Aye’s project aims to develop technologies that can map with unprecedented resolution in living organism the bioactivity of small molecules called immunometabolites. These chemical signals have poorly-described signalling behaviours, but are believed to have important functions in fine-tuning locale-specific immune responses. Decoding their cell-specific signalling activities could open up new opportunities for precision therapies. Through collaborating with clinicians at Oxford and elsewhere, Prof Aye aims to access clinical samples and unique disease models, to help translate new insights directly towards healthcare advances.

“This prestigious funding support will help us drive our new vision at Oxford with great momentum. Credit goes to numerous former and present team members whose enormous efforts crucially helped the lab to build paradigmatic foundations in the field. We look forward to unravelling complex problems through our project," shared Professor Aye. 

Professor Aye joined Pembroke this Michaelmas as Tutor and Fellow in Organic Chemistry and as a member of College’s Governing Body. In November 2024, her lab’s research findings were published in the journal Cell. 

Many congratulations to Professor Aye and her lab for receiving this prestigious grant.

You can read more about the Oxford academics awarded an ERC Grant here.