Prestigious ERC Advanced Grant for Leijten and Van der Meer

Tuesday 23 June 2026

The European Research Council has today announced the winners of the latest round of Advanced Grants. For the University of Twente, this means two grants awarded to Professor Leijten and Professor Van der Meer from the Faculty of Science and Technology (TNW). In total, €838 million in funding has been awarded to 319 leading researchers across Europe. Through these Advanced Grants, experienced researchers are allowed to carry out ambitious, curiosity-driven research projects that may lead to major scientific breakthroughs. The grants are part of the European Horizon Europe programme.

Jeroen Leijten

Awarded funding: €2.5 million
Scientists aim to create large living tissues capable of replacing or repairing damaged organs. However, there is a major challenge: when producing large tissue constructs, cells in the centre receive too little nutrition and die before new blood vessels can grow in.

Jeroen Leijten aims to solve this problem by developing ‘self-feeding’ materials to create living tissue. These tissues will contain tiny smart particles that temporarily release controlled local nutrients, allowing the engineered tissues to remain alive independently for extended periods of time. In addition, extensive networks of small blood vessels will already be printed into the tissues, enabling living implants to connect more quickly and effectively to the patient’s own vascular system.

These new materials will be used to heal large bone defects that are currently difficult to treat, helping to prevent amputations. Successful development of this treatment strategy could also play an important role in achieving faster and more effective healing of many other organs and diseases in the future.

Devaraj van der Meer

Awarded funding: €2.5 million
When designing ships for transporting cryogenic fuels, such as liquefied natural gas (LNG) or liquid hydrogen (LH₂), engineers must deal with the intense movement of fuel inside tanks in rough seas, causing a continuous series of wave impacts on the tank walls. To address this, they can rely on the extensive existing body of research on water wave impacts in air.

However, there is one major challenge: during transport, cryogenic fuels exist in thermal equilibrium with their own vapour, creating a situation fundamentally different from that of water and air. Unlike an inert gas (such as air), the vapour can condense during impact. The key question is whether, and if so how, this affects the pressure and forces exerted on the tank wall during impact.

“This is exactly the focus of my ERC Advanced Grant project ImPhaC. In this project, we will study the effect of phase change (condensation) during liquid–solid impact using carefully controlled experiments at small and intermediate scales. Initial results show that the pressure can sometimes become up to ten times greater. In ImPhaC, we will uncover the physical mechanisms behind this increase and demonstrate how the resulting insights can be applied to cryogenic fuels such as LNG and LH₂, both of which are crucial for the energy transition.”

Four snapshots from a wave impacting a wall (Rodrigo Ezeta, MARIN, Devaraj van der Meer, UT)

Projects selected for funding

The work of the other grant recipients covers a wide range of subjects, including investigating why people differ in their vulnerability to drug addiction, extending women’s fertility and health, and exploring the brain mechanisms behind stuttering.

Another researcher aims to develop new mathematical and algorithmic tools to tackle the growing complexity of large-scale networks, ranging from transport systems to the internet. Yet another scientist seeks to gain a deeper understanding of complex systems across mathematics and physics, from magnets to quantum materials.