Professor Marios Polycarpou, Director of the KIOS Research and Innovation Center of Excellence (KIOS CoE) at the University of Cyprus, has been appointed by the European Research Council (ERC) to Chair the Evaluation Panel PE7 for the 2017 ERC Advanced Grants. The evaluation panel, chaired by Professor Polycarpou, is charged with the responsibility of selecting the top proposals for these highly prestigious research grants awarded by the European Commission. The Evaluation Panel PE7 is responsible for reviewing the submissions for this year’s ERC Advanced Grants in the field of Electrical and Computer Engineering, as well as well as certain submissions in Applied Computer Science, Applied Physics, Applied Mathematics and Νanotechnology. This is the second time that Professor Polycarpou has been appointed to chair the ERC Advanced Grants evaluation panel PE7, the first time being in 2015.
The ERC Advanced Grants are extremely competitive and they are widely considered as the most prestigious research grants in Europe. They provide funding of up to €2.5 million for a period of 5 years to single investigators with their corresponding team. According to the European Research Council, the ERC Advanced Grants are awarded to “exceptional established research leaders for pursuing ground-breaking, high-risk projects that open new directions in their respective research fields or other domains”.
Professor Polycarpou is himself a prior awardee of an ERC Advanced Grant, as he became the first Cypriot scientist to be awarded an ERC Advanced Grant in 2012. This allowed Prof. Polycarpou and his team to pursue pioneering fundamental research aimed at designing and analysing “smart” algorithms for real-time data processing, capable of improving the performance and fault tolerance of critical infrastructures such as power systems, drinking water systems, and transportation networks.
