Three projects, huge potential
2026/06/30
TU Darmstadt has once again performed very well in the international competition for research funding: three researchers have been awarded Proof of Concept Grants by the European Research Council (ERC). The selected projects, which focus on electron microscopy, biomedical research and security in the exchange of chip designs, will each receive 150,000 euros over a period of 18 months. The aim of the funding is to translate research findings into practical applications.
In the current funding round, the ERC has selected all the projects submitted by researchers at TU Darmstadt: “CALIBRATE” by Professor Leopoldo Molina-Luna (Department of Materials- and Geosciences), “cryo-iLM” by Professor Thomas Burg (Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology) and “MIRAGE” by Professor Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi (Department of Computer Science).
Matthias Oechsner,
Vice-President for Research at TU Darmstadt
I would like to offer my warmest congratulations to my colleagues Molina-Luna, Burg and Sadeghi on their achievements. They demonstrate once again the sustained innovative strength that TU Darmstadt is capable of.
“I am delighted that, following the successful basic research carried out in our ERC Grant projects, we can now explore and harness the economic and societal innovation potential of these scientific findings in three different ways,” says Professor Matthias Oechsner, Vice-President for Research at TU Darmstadt. “I would like to offer my warmest congratulations to my colleagues Molina-Luna, Burg and Sadeghi on their achievements. They demonstrate once again the sustained innovative strength that TU Darmstadt is capable of.”
From research to application
Proof of Concept Grants are intended to ensure the continuity of high-calibre research. No funding is provided for new projects; instead, the funding is aimed exclusively at researchers who already have an ERC Grant and want to use research findings from their current or completed project pre-commercially. The aim of a Proof of Concept Project should be to assess the market potential of such an idea. Therefore, the ERC does not use these grants to fund research activities, but instead funds measures for further development with regard to the application maturity, commercialisation or marketing of the idea. In the most recent funding round, 182 grants were awarded out of 554 applications submitted. Germany received 31 of these highly sought-after grants, four of which went to the Technical University of Munich and three each to the Technical University of Darmstadt and the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
Project “CALIBRATE”, Professor Leopoldo Molina-Luna
“CALIBRATE” (Chip-based Accurate eLectron Intensity Beam Readout for Advanced TEM Experiments) is developing a new calibration standard for transmission electron microscopy (TEM), one of the most important tools in modern materials research. To ensure that measurement results are reliable and comparable, the intensity of the electron beam at sample position must be known accurately. However, no universally applicable standard currently exists for this purpose. Professor Leopoldo Molina-Luna, a member of the Matter and Materials (M+M) research field of TU Darmstadt, aims to develop such a standard as part of the “CALIBRATE” project. To this end, microscopically small Faraday cups are being integrated onto MEMS chips already used in modern transmission electron microscopes, enabling direct and precise measurement if the electron beam at the sample site. “CALIBRATE” builds on the experience gained from the “STARE” and “BED-TEM” Proof of Concept (PoC) Projects and is already Molina-Luna’s fifth ERC-funded project. The project involves close scientific collaboration with RMU’s partner, Goethe University Frankfurt.
Project “cryo-iLM”, Professor Thomas Burg
Existing microscopy techniques quickly reach their limits when used on living cells: movement, light sensitivity and ongoing biological changes make high-resolution investigations difficult. Flash-freezing within fractions of a second can solve this problem; however, the performance of today’s optical microscopes is severely limited at low temperatures. This is where the “cryo-iLM” project led by Professor Thomas Burg, a member of the Matter and Materials (M+M) research field, comes in. The aim is to develop a novel microscopy platform: using microsystem technology, ultra-cold samples are to be brought into direct and non-destructive contact with the microscope’s objective lens within a very small space. This will enable the internal structures to be imaged at the highest resolution even when cold, opening up new possibilities in basic biomedical research. The project builds directly on Burg’s “MICROCRYO” project, which was also funded by the ERC.
Project “MIRAGE”, Professor Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi
Modern computer chips are built from numerous IP blocks that companies exchange with one another — convenient for development, but not without risk: artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly adept at identifying and replicating such designs. The “MIRAGE” project addresses this very challenge: it automatically transforms RTL code — the hardware description language used for chip circuitry — in such a way that its functionality remains entirely intact yet renders it virtually unrecognisable to AI systems. This allows companies to share their designs more securely, without exposing commercially sensitive information. The Proof of Concept Project is led by Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi. “MIRAGE” is based within the Department of Computer Science (research field Information and Intelligence (I+I)). It builds on “HYDRANOS” — a project awarded an ERC Advanced Grant in 2022 — which protects chips against unknown attacks by enabling security-critical components to be adapted after manufacture. “MIRAGE” now extends this protection upstream, to the level of design itself.
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