Insight Funded Investigator Professor Madeleine Lowery has been awarded an ERC Proof-of-Concept or ‘top-up’ grant of €150,000 to explore the commercial or societal potential of her ERC-funded frontier research results.

She is one of 62 ERC grant holders who have been awarded this funding.

Professor Lowery’s cutting edge research in UCD’s School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering is focused on using engineering methods to model the brain, nerves and muscles to improve technology which is used to treat motor symptoms associated with Parkinson’s disease.

Four years ago, Professor Lowery was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant of €2 million, for a research project focused on deep brain stimulation (DBS) therapy used to treat the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. These ERC proof of concept grants can be used in different ways such as preparing patent applications, exploring business opportunities or verifying the practical viability of scientific concepts. You can read more about this story from UCD Innovation here.