Pavan Ramdya wins SNSF Eccellenza Grant
Pavan Ramdya (credit: Alban Kakulya/EPFL)
Professor Pavan Ramdya has been awarded an Eccellenza Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation.
The Swiss National Foundation’s Eccellenza Professorial Fellowships and SNSF Eccellenza Grants are given each year to “highly qualified young researchers who aspire to a permanent professorship.” The goal is to support these scientists in leading generously funded research projects with their own team at a Swiss higher education institution.
The Eccellenza Grants aim at “researchers in all disciplines who have recently been appointed as tenure-track assistant professors at a Swiss higher education institution.” The Grants offer project funds up to 1,500,000 Swiss francs over five years.
The Eccellenza Professorial Fellowships are aimed “at outstanding researchers in all disciplines who have a doctorate or equivalent qualification and are pursuing an academic career, but who have not yet obtained an assistant professorship.” Along with salaries, the Fellowships fund projects up to 1,000,000 Swiss francs over five years.
This year, Pavan Ramdya, an Assistant Professor who directs with directs the Neuroengineering Laboratory at EPFL has been awarded an Eccellenza Grant, along with another four EPFL Professors. Ramdya’s awarded project is titled: Reverse-engineering and digital reconstruction of a limb control circuit.
“Robots cannot match the abilities of animals to sense, decide, and act,” he explains. “Focusing on fly (Drosophila melanogaster) behaviors like grooming and locomotion, we aim to reveal how biological limb control circuits use mechanosensory feedback to make precise movements, and how they integrate motor signals and sensory feedback. We will investigate theoretical predictions for biological movement control efficiency, and identify how animals adapt movements across species.”