Two UiB Researchers Awarded ERC Starting Grant

Joshua Oldham-Dorrington and Marianna Betti are among the 421 early-career researchers in Europe that have received an ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) this autumn. 

An ERC Starting Grant is a large, competitive European research grant given to talented early-career scientists who want to build their own independent research team or program.

A total of €705 million in funding will go to the Starting Grant researchers across Europe. Seven of the grantees work at Norwegian institutions.

The competition was fierce; only 8.8 % of a record 4,807 applications received funding.

"Starting Grants will give these researchers independence and support early on in their careers, needed for them to push scientific boundaries. This is the best investment we can make to further strengthen our research base and Europe’s future," says the President of European Research Council, Maria Leptin.

Using AI to understand extreme rainfall

Joshua Oldham-Dorrington, who works at the Geophysical Institute and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, will lead the ERC-funded project RAPTURE. The project will investigate how artificial intelligence can be used to better understand and predict extreme rainfall in a warmer and wetter climate.

"AI has the potential to transform climate modelling by allowing us to simulate extreme weather events much more efficiently than today. With RAPTURE, we will test how reliable these new AI tools are and how they can help us better understand future climate risks," says Oldham-Dorrington.

The five-year project will enable him to establish a research team in Bergen, including two PhD candidates and two postdoctoral researchers.

Cutting-edge research

"The ERC Starting Grant gives us the opportunity to work systematically on fundamental scientific questions that would be difficult to address as a single researcher. I'm also excited to build a research group in Bergen and contribute to the strong climate and weather research environment here," he says.

Gunn Mangerud, Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology says that the project has the potential to generate new knowledge of great significance both for science and for society's climate adaptation efforts.

"Joshua Oldham-Dorrington's RAPTURE project combines cutting-edge climate research and artificial intelligence to address one of the major challenges of our time: understanding and predicting extreme rainfall in a changing climate," she says. 

Exploring the lives of seafarers in a changing ocean

Marianna Betti, from the Department of Social Anthropology, has received funding for the project Seafarers: Life, Meaning and Power in a Changing Ocean World: SeaLife. The project is the first comparative ethnographic study of seafarers' lives, knowledge and experiences across three ocean regions during a period of major technological, political and environmental change.

SeaLife will examine how seafarers experience transformations driven by automation, offshore energy development and maritime security regimes in the North Sea, the Caribbean and the Western Indian Ocean.

"Seafarers are essential to global trade, exploration and resource extraction, yet their experiences and knowledge are often overlooked. SeaLife will explore how they understand and navigate the profound changes currently reshaping the world's oceans, and how they make a life at sea" Betti says.

The project combines ethnographic fieldwork aboard ships and in maritime communities with archival and museum research and oral histories.

"By comparing seafarers' experiences across different ocean regions, we hope to develop new perspectives on how people, technology and the sea are interconnected in times of global transformation," she says.

An achievement 

"I congratulate Marianna Betti on this impressive achievement. SeaLife is an ambitious and innovative project that highlights the experiences and knowledge of seafarers at a time of major technological, political and environmental change. It draws attention to the people who keep the world's maritime infrastructures running, yet often remain invisible in research and public debate," Synnøve Bendixsen, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, says and adds:

"This ERC grant is an important recognition of Marianna's research and highlights the high academic quality and international standing of the research communities at the Faculty of Social Sciences. I look forward to following the project's progress."