FIS call: Dr. DANA BRANZEI awarded an advanced grant in the ERC Life Sciences sector

With the publication of the rankings on 31 July, the evaluation procedure for the projects of the Italian Science Fund of the Ministry of University and Research, FIS 2021, was concluded. The FIS call aims to support fundamental research projects at national level, similar to those funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

Thanks to a budget of 50 million euro, 25 Advanced Grants were funded for amounts up to one and a half million euro each, intended for established Principal Investigators, and 22 Starting Grants for amounts up to one million euro each, intended for Principal Junior Investigators, who have not obtained their doctorate for more than 10 years.

In total 47 projects out of 1912 presented with a success rate of 2.5%.

Dr. DANA BRANZEI (Institute of Molecular Genetics Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Pavia) was awarded an advanced grant in the ERC Life Sciences sector with the project entitled: Replication-associated cohesion and recombination.

Dr. Branzei, born in Romania, after obtaining her degree and doctorate in Japan, moved to Italy where in 2008 she became PI at IFOM in Milan. She has won numerous international grants including an ERC Starting Grant (2009-2014) and an ERC consolidator (2016-2021) thanks to which she obtained the position of first CNR researcher in 2019. Since 2022 she is CNR Research Director and she is an EMBO member. She obtained prestigious international awards. Her scientific interests mainly concern: 1) understanding the origins of chromosomal instability in eukaryotic cells following replicative stress and 2) how genome replication is coupled to the spatial organization of DNA in the cell nucleus. She has published 91 papers on prestigious international journals including only  3 Nature communications, 1 Science, 1 PNAS and 2 Genes and Development in the last 3 years.