In 2007, the European Commission created the European Research Council (ERC) with the aim of promoting excellent basic science in Europe, supporting the best researchers from all fields and of any nationality who wished to pursue their research at the frontiers of knowledge. The ERC funds prestigious projects that seek to develop innovative and high-risk research. Since its creation, the ERC has had a considerable impact on the European research landscape.
In the ERC Consolidator Call —a scheme aimed at outstanding researchers with between 7 and 12 years of scientific experience, intended to fund the most promising ideas at the frontier of knowledge— two of this year’s grants have been awarded to the Basque Country:
Ikerbasque researcher Marina Kalashnikova, from the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL), is one of the beneficiaries of the 2025 ERC Consolidator Grants. Kalashnikova, leader of the “Child Language and Cognition” group, will receive €2 million from the European Union to carry out the Bilingual LENS project over the next five years. This pioneering initiative aims to identify the neurobiological and environmental factors that influence early language development in infants exposed to a bilingual environment from birth.
“Most children in the world grow up acquiring more than one language. However, much of our knowledge about how children learn language is based on research with monolingual children. The Bilingual LENS project challenges this approach,” explains the BCBL expert.
To fill this scientific gap, the project will conduct longitudinal studies with children born and raised in Gipuzkoa who hear Basque and Spanish from their earliest days. The follow-up will cover the period from the first month to 24 months of age.
The second grant has been awarded to Fernando González Zalba, Ikerbasque Research Professor at nanoGUNE and Principal Engineer at Quantum Motion. This funding will drive the QuDos project, an innovative initiative focused on the use of semiconductor quantum dots to develop ultra-low-power microwave control and readout electronics for quantum computers. This research could also be applied to classical electronics used across all quantum computing modalities, beyond silicon-based qubits.
“One of the greatest challenges in making a viable, large-scale quantum computing system is managing the energy dissipation produced by the classical electronics required for qubit control and readout. It is a problem that all quantum computing modalities will have to address if they hope to build an integrated system,” says González Zalba. “I am thrilled that our proposal has been selected, as this will allow us to advance our idea of using semiconductor quantum dots to tackle this challenge and to develop an integrated package that combines the benefits of quantum processors and classical electronics into a single piece of silicon.”
The ERC is the main European funding organization for frontier research and supports researchers in developing creative projects within the European Union. The grant awarded to González Zalba is one of the 349 Consolidator Grants granted out of more than 3,100 applications, and is funded through the Horizon Europe programme. The research will be carried out within the framework of the collaboration agreement between nanoGUNE and Quantum Motion, in the new Quantum Hardware laboratories at nanoGUNE in Donostia / San Sebastián.
The initiatives supported by the European Research Council enjoy great prestige within the international scientific community. In fact, success in obtaining these grants—covering all scientific fields—is a marker of excellence at the international level. According to Fernando Cossio, Scientific Director of Ikerbasque, “Obtaining ERC grants positions the Basque Country as a region recognised internationally for advanced research, with Basque research groups operating at an international level and with the right conditions to develop world-class research.”
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