ERC Starting Grants awarded to TUM-IAS Fellows
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A total of ten projects led by TUM researchers have been awarded the prestigious ERC Starting Grants in the latest funding round. Since 2007, researchers at TUM have secured 280 ERC Grants. These grants are awarded annually in various categories. Through its Starting Grants, the ERC supports outstanding researchers at the early stages of their independent careers. Each grant is worth up to €1.5 million.
Among the TUM researchers receiving an ERC Starting Grant are two TUM-IAS Fellows, Prof. Dr. Julian Grünewald and Prof. Dr. Violetta Weger.
Prof. Dr. Julian Grünewald
In 2025, for the first time, a bespoke CRISPR gene therapy was developed and successfully administered to a single patient. For gene therapy, this was a kind of "moon landing". But one decisive question remains open: how can gene editing be made scalable – that is, usable for many people? The same applies to inherited diseases of the heart muscle, which affect around 18 million people worldwide. So far, it has not been possible to modify mutated genes directly in the human heart. Even delivering CRISPR tools into the heart is a challenge. In addition, it would be advantageous to correct several different mutations with a single edit, rather than just one. This is what Julian Grünewald sets out to do in his ONE2MANY project – making future gene editing more scalable and therefore accessible to many patients. With his team, he will use AI to develop new gene editing tools and approaches. Applied first to mutations in the LMNA gene, these are designed to correct a whole group of mutations in one go, or to replace the entire gene. To deliver them into the heart, the team will develop new methods based on lipid nanoparticles. In the long term, the aim is scalable treatment approaches and tools that can be transferred to other inherited heart diseases – and beyond.
Julian Grünewald is Rudolf Mößbauer Tenure Track Professor of Gene Editing at the TUM School of Medicine and Health and leads a research group at the Center for Organoid Systems (COS) and at the Department of Internal Medicine I (Cardiology, Angiology, Pneumology) of the TUM University Hospital Rechts der Isar. He is also a Fellow of the TUM Institute for Advanced Study (TUM-IAS).
Prof. Dr. Violetta Weger
Quantum computers pose a fundamental challenge to modern cryptography: many of the mathematical problems underlying today's encryption and signature schemes could be solved efficiently by sufficiently powerful quantum computers. New quantum-resistant cryptographic systems are therefore being developed and standardized worldwide. One promising alternative is code-based cryptography, whose security relies on difficult problems from the mathematical theory of error-correcting codes.
In her project CODES – Cryptanalysis Of Decoding, Equivalence and algebraic Structure, Prof. Violetta Weger investigates the mathematical foundations of this security. The project focuses on three fundamental problems: decoding general codes, determining when two codes are equivalent, and detecting hidden algebraic structure. CODES aims to understand more precisely how difficult these problems really are and which mathematical properties can be exploited in cryptographic attacks. By developing new methods at the intersection of algebra, coding theory, and combinatorics, the project seeks to provide a stronger mathematical basis for assessing the security of future post-quantum cryptographic systems.
Violetta Weger is Rudolf Mößbauer Tenure Track Professor of Applied Algebra at the TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology and Fellow of the TUM Institute for Advanced Study (TUM-IAS).
More information:
TUM Website – Press Release
Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst – Pressemitteilung (German)