Two early-career researchers from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have been successful in the latest call for Starting Grants from the European Research Council (ERC): In the COOLWEAVE project, Dr. Jingyuan Xu is developing a climate-friendly cooling technology. In the DATAARK project, Dr. Maryia Rusak is investigating how a classification system for building information developed across Europe after the Second World War and influenced major architectural projects. The two five-year projects will each receive EUR 1.5 million in funding.

A Pediatric Investigation study finds that early autism identification can fail after screening, with gaps in referral, diagnosis, service capacity, and support. Reviewing evidence across children aged 0–5 years, researchers show that screening can accelerate diagnosis for some children but cannot replace repeated surveillance or clinical concern. The findings support faster, more coordinated and equitable pathways that help families reach assessment and needs-based support sooner, even before diagnostic certainty is complete.

Segmentation tools help doctors identify and delineate tumors, lesions, and other abnormalities in medical images. However, noise, redundant information, and blurred boundaries can make automated segmentation difficult. Researchers from Tongji University in China and the University of Toyama in Japan developed V-UNet, a new model designed to capture global context and fine local details. Tests on four public datasets demonstrated competitive segmentation performance with relatively low computational requirements.

Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have become an integral part of everyday life for many people and businesses. They are being used, for example, to gather information from multiple sources and to support complex planning processes. Yet these AI systems are not infallible and they continue to make mistakes – LLMs hallucinate and struggle to combine information in a logically rigorous manner. Computational linguist Michael Hahn has set out to strengthen the theoretical foundations of AI reasoning, and he has now been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant worth €1.5 million over five years to pursue this work.

Five talented early-career researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) have secured a total of 9.2 million euros ($10.7 million) in highly selective Starting Grants from the European Research Council (ERC). With projects focused on AI, astrophysics, bacterial immune systems, quantum matter and optics, this major success underscores ISTA’s ability to attract exceptional young researchers and foster ambitious, curiosity-driven science.