Our ERC Principal Investigators, Associate Professor Didem UNAT and Associate Professor Levent BEKER from Koç University, have been awarded funding under the first cut-off of the ERC 2026 Proof of Concept Call. With this achievement, Associate Professor Didem UNAT has become the first female researcher in Türkiye to receive funding through an ERC Proof of Concept call.
We warmly congratulate our distinguished researchers and their university and wish them continued success in their future endeavors.
 |
PI: Didem UNAT Project Acronym: UNIPATH Project Tittle: Universal Communication Data-Path Monitoring and Visualization for Sustainable AI and HPC Host Institution: Koç University Project Duration: 18 month Budget: 150,000 EUR Related ERC Granti: "BeyondMoore(ERC-2020-StG, PE6) |
Assoc. Prof. Didem UNAT
In the massive data centers where large AI models are trained, the biggest source of slowdown in these systems is the data movement between processors. Assoc. Prof. UNAT's UNIPATH project builds a universal communication monitoring tool, spanning every layer of the system, to pinpoint the communication bottlenecks between processors and make these massive machines run faster, leaner, and greener.
This project was submitted under Associate Professor Didem UNAT's ERC Starting Grant project, "BeyondMoore: Pioneering a New Path in Parallel Programming Beyond Moore’s Law", which was awarded €1.5 million in funding under the ERC-2020-StG call. With this achievement, Associate Professor Didem UNAT has become the first female researcher in Türkiye to receive funding through an ERC Proof of Concept call.
 | PI: Levent BEKER Project Acronym: FIRST-SIGN Project Tittle: Wearable Cardiac Biomarker Testing at the Point of Need Host Institution: Koç University Project Duration: 18 month Budget: 150,000 EUR Related ERC Grant: "2ND-CHANCE(ERC-2020-CoG, PE7) |
Assoc. Prof. Levent BEKER
BEKER’s project, "FIRST-SIGN: Wearable Cardiac Biomarker Testing at the Point of Need," aims to develop a painless, wearable patch technology designed to detect the early signs of a heart attack. The project seeks to measure biomarkers indicative of cardiac damage without the need for blood sampling and to transmit the results directly to smartphones. The technology is expected to support early clinical decision-making by providing healthcare professionals with timely information during ambulance transport, while also enabling the safe monitoring of patients’ cardiac health at home following hospital discharge.
This project has been developed within the framework of Associate Professor Levent BEKER’s ERC Starting Grant project, "2ND-CHANCE: Implantable Sensors and Ultrasonic Data Link with Triggered Bioresorption for Next-Generation Wireless Cardiac Monitoring," which was awarded €2.5 million in funding under the ERC-2021-StG call. BEKER had previously secured funding for the Proof of Concept project "BladderWatch: Wearable Device for Continuous Bladder Volume Monitoring," which was also developed based on the outcomes of the same ERC project. With this latest achievement, he has received ERC Proof of Concept funding for a second time.
With these projects, the total number of ERC Proof of Concept projects completed or currently being carried out in Türkiye has reached 19.
A total of six proposals were submitted from Türkiye to the first cut-off of the ERC-2026-PoC call, two of which were selected for funding.
The European Research Council (ERC) supports frontier research projects and the researchers who conduct them solely on the basis of scientific excellence. The ERC places particular emphasis on ambitious ground breaking research and supports projects that are multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary in nature, as well as those that pursue novel ideas and unconventional, innovative approaches. Proof of Concept (PoC) projects are awarded to ERC Principal Investigators who have previously received ERC funding. These grants provide additional support for activities aimed at verifying the commercial or societal potential of results generated by ERC-funded research and facilitating the translation of research outcomes into practical applications and innovations.