ERC Starting Grant for Dr. Minghao Yu

Today, the European Research Council (ERC) announced the winners of 400 Starting Grants for early-career researchers across Europe, including three outstanding scientists from TU Dresden, who will each receive EUR 1.5 million for their research between 2024 and 2028.

The ERC Starting Grants help researchers at the beginning of their careers to launch their own projects, form their teams and pursue their academic endeavors. The grants – totaling a whopping EUR 628 million – support cutting-edge research in a wide range of disciplines, from medicine and physics to social sciences and humanities. 2,696 proposals were submitted for the current round of the competition. Just under 15 percent of the applications were awarded funding.

The successful applicants will undertake their projects at universities and research centers in 24 European countries. Most of these projects are based in Germany (87), France (50), the Netherlands (44), and the United Kingdom (32). The award-winning researchers come from Europe and further afield, with a total of 44 nationalities represented, primarily researchers from Germany (66), Italy (57), France (32), and the United Kingdom (24).

Dr. Minghao Yu: Magnesium batteries as next generation energy storage systems

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With his "BattSkin” project (Practical Magnesium Batteries Enabled by 2D Crystalline Polymer-Based Artificial Electrode Skins), chemist Dr. Minghao Yu aims to advance research into a new and more sustainable battery technology over the next five years. The focus will be on advancing the promising magnesium batteries, using precise polymer chemistry to govern the interfacial ion dynamics. Magnesium batteries are considered top candidates in the race for the next generation of battery technologies due to their low cost, high efficiency, sustainability, and safety. So far, they are still the subject of fundamental research, since charge transfers at the interface in particular still pose problems in practical implementation.

In his ERC project, Dr. Minghao Yu will work on a groundbreaking concept in which molecule-specific customizable 2D crystalline polymers (2DCPs) serve as artificial electrode 'skins', a kind of interphase, to regulate interfacial ion transport and make magnesium batteries ready for application. “With the project, I expect to strengthen my research independence by assembling a skilled and competitive research team with diverse expertise. Meanwhile, the scientific outcomes will earn me a unique academic reputation in the field of next-generation sustainable batteries,”Yu is convinced.

The Chinese-born chemist has been leading a research group at cfaed (Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden) since March 2019 and works at the Faculty of Chemistry and Food Chemistry at TU Dresden. He has already been listed several times in Clarivate Analytics’ list of Highly Cited Researchers and has received numerous other awards.

The other two Starting Grants at TUD were granted to Dr. Alejandro Tabas and Prof. Jakob N. Kather.

About the ERC
The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organization for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers 4 core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to explore the innovation potential of their ideas or research results. The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion, as part of the Horizon Europe program.

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