Eight projects from Université Paris-Saclay community awarded ERC Starting Grants 2025

Since they were first launched in 2007, ERC Starting Grants have supported young European researchers, who obtained their PhD two to seven years ago, to pursue exploratory research projects over a 5-year period with €1.5 million in funding. This year, 478 projects were selected, for a total amount of €761 million.

Université Paris-Saclay is proud of its eight winners in 2025:

• Lucile Anthore-Dalion and her DECAF project 

Lucile Anthore Dalion, CNRS researcher at the Laboratory of Molecular Chemistry and Catalysis for Energy (LCMCE/Nimbe - Univ. Paris-Saclay/CEA/CNRS), specializes in developing new reactions of nitrogen oxides (nitrous oxide, nitrates, nitrites, etc.) and the nitrogen/oxygen bond, enabling simpler and more economical design and synthesis of new molecules. She has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant for her project DECAF, Carboxylic esters as bifunctional reagents in decarboxylative cross-coupling reactions and alkene functionalizations.

Transition-metal-catalysed cross-coupling reactions have transformed the formation of carbon-carbon bonds in complex organic molecules, revolutionizing fields such as pharmaceuticals, natural product synthesis, and polymers. Despite their many applications, these reactions heavily rely on organometallic reagents that require multiple preparation steps and often lack stability. “DECAF” aims to mimic these reactions by using carboxylic esters as starting materials. Esters are stable, readily available through condensation of an alcohol with a carboxylic acid, and potentially biosourced. In this project, the two carbon components of the esters will serve as the two coupling partners through simple extrusion of a CO₂ molecule. The project’s cornerstone is the rational design of a catalytic system able to selectively break strong C-O and C-C bonds and recombine them. This project will therefore provide the chemical tools to divert the classical reactivity of esters, particularly by breaking strong bonds. Ultimately, the new reactions developed in “DECAF” will enable more sustainable synthesis of organic molecules essential to our daily lives.

• Matteo Bugli and his project BlackJET 

Matteo Bugli is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Paris Astrophysics Institute (CNRS). After completing his PhD and postdoctoral work at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, he undertook a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Astrophysics (DRF/Irfu - Univ. Paris-Saclay/CEA), where he will return in March 2026 to commence his BlackJET project.

BlackJET proposes a novel, comprehensive theoretical approach to stellar explosions, combining different simulation strategies to provide a more accurate description. The ultimate aim is to deliver a unified model of long gamma-ray bursts, encompassing all stages—from the onset of stellar collapse to the resulting electromagnetic emission.

• Sandrine Codis and her project COLIBRI

Sandrine Codis, a CNRS researcher at the Laboratory of Cosmology and Galaxy Evolution (LCEG - Univ. Paris-Saclay/CEA/CNRS), specialises in modelling the large structures of the universe through analytical calculations and theoretical simulations. She received a Starting Grant for her COLIBRI project, Cosmic non-linearities: Impact of baryons on cosmological inference with modern galaxy surveys.

Cosmology is entering a new era with revolutionary surveys aimed notably at mapping dark matter and constraining the nature of dark energy. However, the observables are always related to "visible" matter (baryons) which is a biased tracer of dark matter. Baryons do not passively follow the assembly of dark matter structures, but they also feedback on the distribution of dark matter, and therefore significantly impact the estimators probing cosmology. If these effects are not precisely taken into account, they induce biases and could potentially engender apparent tensions, some of which are already observed, between the various cosmological surveys and probes. The COLIBRI project proposes to robustly keep under control the effect of baryons on the joint analysis of galaxy lensing and clustering data through i) new theoretical frameworks to capture efficiently the cosmological information content on mildly nonlinear scales affected by baryons and ii) novel hydrodynamical simulations accurately resolving baryonic physics inside unprecedentedly large volumes, enabled by innovative simulation techniques and the evolution of computing resources in Europe in the exascale era. These simulations and theoretical frameworks will thus allow for a robust characterization of baryons on cosmological scales, in order to make the most of the rich datasets that will be observed in the future, particularly by the Euclid space telescope.

• Émilien Fargues and his project POSTCOLCIT

Émilien Fargues, postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Sociological Research on Law and Penal Institutions (CESDIP - Univ. Paris-Saclay/UVSQ/Univ. CergyPontoise/CNRS/Ministry of Justice), works at the intersection of public policy analysis and sociology of law, with a particular focus on citizenship policies in postcolonial contexts. He has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant for his project POSTCOLCIT - Postcolonial perspectives on citizenship and belonging in former European colonial powers.

POSTCOLCIT explores the colonial legacies of nationality law in contemporary Europe. This comparative research project analyses how several former European colonial powers (Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United Kingdom) have redefined their nationality ties with populations from their former colonies since decolonisation. By combining the study of legal frameworks, administrative archives, and life stories collected through interviews, POSTCOLCIT examines how nationality laws adopted after independence continue to influence the trajectories of people from former colonies and their descendants, often in unequal and conflictual ways. In particular, the project examines how these individuals perceive, mobilise, or contest the nationality law of the former colonial power, and how this becomes a battleground for demands for justice and recognition. This research thus aims to shed crucial light on the persistence of colonial legacies in European nationality and immigration policies, as well as on contemporary forms of political mobilisation in a postcolonial context.

• Isabella Boventer and her project ARXIMEDES

Isabella Boventer, research engineer at THALES in the Albert Fert Laboratory (LAF - Univ. Paris-Saclay/Thales/CNRS), is a specialist in oxide magnonics and quantum devices. She has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant for her project ARXIMEDES: A new platform for exploring magnonics interfaced with ultracold neutral atoms for quantum information.

ARXIMEDES is the first ERC hosted by THALES at the research center of THALES RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY (Thales TRT) where it will be conducted at the Laboratoire Albert Fert, the cradle of spintronics. In this spirit, together with new insights to fundamental physics, ARXIMEDES unique idea will also propel atom chip quantum sensors using magnonics beyond state-of-the-art and create new pathways for on chip quantum technologies in the 21st century.

ARXIMEDES’ ambition is to establish a novel neutral atom-magnon platform towards on-chip quantum information processing (QIP) and quantum simulation at 300 K. It will explore the braiding of magnonics e.g. spin waves with cold matter by harnessing spin waves to trap ultracold neutral 87Rubidium (Rb) atoms on chip via magnonic lattice potentials and later on controlling the atoms & their interactions via magnonics which will pioneer on-chip sensing, QIP and quantum simulation.

ARXIMEDES’ compact atom-magnon chip will uniquely combine the scalability, tunability and controllability of magnonics with the advantages of neutral atom qubits (e.g. long coherence times, low error rates). ARXIMEDES will thus establish new avenues for QIP and quantum simulation for many-body physics such as by studying very short-range atom interaction regimes. Further, magnon-atom interactions will be explored for the first time as well as extending state-of-the art magnonics by the new roles of spin wave interference, pulses and propagation in ARXIMEDES. 

• James O’Sullivan and his project nQUICHE

James O’Sullivan, CEA researcher in the Quantronics group at the Condensed Matter Physics Department (DRF/Iramis/Spec - Univ. Paris-Saclay/CEA/CNRS), has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant for his project nQUICHE, which aims to realise the building block of a Quantum Random Access Memory (QRAM). This device can store and manipulate quantum information across multiple superposed cells, a key component for scalable quantum computing.

By combining electronic and nuclear spins with superconducting circuits in a hybrid architecture, nQUICHE will explore modular and scalable approaches to quantum information processing. Experiments will probe quantum effects at the single-spin level, opening new possibilities in cryptography, quantum chemistry, and quantum machine learning. 

• Julio Parra Martinez and his project GravitaS

Julio Parra Martinez, theoretical physicist at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques - Université Paris-Saclay (IHES), is a specialist in quantum field theory, scattering amplitudes, gravitation, effective field theories, and string theory. He has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant for his project GravitaS: The gravitational S-matrix: from theory to experiment.

One of the major challenges in gravitational wave physics is calculating the dynamics and signals from extreme mass ratio inspirals (EMRIs). An example of such a signal is the gravitational radiation (i.e., ripples in space and time) emitted by a compact star or black hole orbiting and spiraling into the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. This type of system will be one of the main sources for future space-based gravitational wave detectors, such as the LISA mission, which the European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch in about ten years.

In principle, Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicts the signals from EMRIs, but in practice, it is extremely difficult to extract predictions from the theory. This is because these systems involve both incredibly strong gravitational fields and extremely high velocities (close to the speed of light), so that even the most powerful supercomputers cannot fully solve the equations.

However, the very features that make these systems difficult to understand also make them exciting, as they will open a window onto gravitational physics that we have never explored before, both theoretically and experimentally. The GravitaS project therefore aims to tackle this problem directly by combining ideas from particle physics and classical relativistic field theory.

• Natalia Porqueres and her project OCAPi 

Natalia Porqueres, CEA researcher in the Cosmostat team of the Department of Astrophysics/Astrophysics, Instrumentation and Modeling of ParisSaclay (DAP/AIM - Univ. Paris-Saclay/CEA/CNRS/Univ. ParisCité), specializes in developing new data analysis techniques for cosmological surveys. She has received a Starting grant for her project OCAPi - Optimal cosmological analysis at the pixel level.

The standard cosmological model succeeds at explaining a vast range of observations, but it relies on two components we still do not understand: dark matter and dark energy. To investigate their nature, the Euclid mission and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will measure the positions and shapes of billions of galaxies. The apparent shapes of galaxies are slightly distorted by the gravity of cosmic structures, an effect known as weak gravitational lensing. This is the most promising cosmological probe of the next decade, and, combined with the unprecedented precision of Euclid and Rubin, can revolutionise our understanding of the Universe. However, realising the full potential of these datasets will require highly precise and accurate data analysis techniques.

The OCAPi project will develop cutting-edge methods to make optimal use of weak lensing data and deliver the most precise constraints on cosmological parameters from Euclid data. Unlike standard analyses, which compress the data and inevitably lose information, OCAPi will analyse the lensing maps pixel by pixel, without any data compression. This ensures that we capture all the information in the data, maximising precision and strengthening our ability to distinguish cosmological signals from systematic effects. This approach also provides probabilistic maps of the matter distribution at different cosmic times, making dark matter visible and opening up a new way of testing physics with the large-scale structures of the Universe.

By maximising the scientific return of one of the most powerful datasets that cosmology will have for decades, OCAPi will advance our understanding of dark energy and provide a digital twin of the Universe to investigate the formation and evolution of cosmic structures.