Coveted ERC Consolidator Grant goes to Associate Professor Bulat Ibragimov

With the prestigious Consolidator Grant, the ERC supports researchers in establishing independent research teams and developing their most promising scientific ideas. The funding is provided through the EU's Horizon Europe programme.

Chair of the European Research Council Prof. Maria Leptin congratulates all grant recipients, but also stress the need to support research that is driven by a desire to advance scientific understanding without necessarily considering its specific application:

- Congratulations to all the researchers who have won ERC Consolidator Grants, in this latest round for the mid-career stage. Whilst we had the funds available to back more applicants this year than in 2023, the fact remains that many applicants who were rated as excellent in this competition will still not be funded due to lack of budget. This waste of talent can only be tackled by increasing the investment in blue-sky research in Europe.

An atlas for safer radiotherapy

Radiotherapy (RT) is an important part of cancer treatment and can potentially benefit approximately half of the patients. However, less than 80% of patients who could benefit from RT actually receive treatment in Europe.

A major barrier is the risk of side effects, known as toxicities, which occur when radiation damages healthy tissue. Toxicities have been poorly predicted and are therefore common after radiation treatments.

Bulat Ibragimov's AIDose project will build on his work on prediction of hepatobiliary toxicity, advances in artificial intelligence (AI), and medical imaging analysis to develop the first toxicity risk atlas for thoracic and abdominal organs-to-risk (OARs), i.e. organs close to tumors. The atlas is intended as a three-dimensional map of OARs with precisely marked anatomical subareas associated with high toxicity risk.

- Two identical patients could receive similar treatments with very different results. The AIDose project will use machine learning methods to study dose maps for radiotherapy to find consistent patterns associated with toxicity risks and pinpoint vulnerable anatomical areas in the human body. The project has the potential to answer the question of why radiation treatments fail and how to increase their effectiveness, explains Bulat Ibragimov.

The feasibility of AIDose is supported by Bulat Ibragimov's previous research, and the application of AI for planning radiation therapy and prediction of outcomes is considered the primary focus area of radiation oncology. The SCIENCE researcher represents a unique opportunity to advance the innovative and clinically important direction of research.

- I am honoured to receive the ERC Consolidator Grant. This allows me to continue working on the interface between computer science and medicine and to look for new ways in which machine learning can improve healthcare, says Bulat Ibragimov.

The grant amounts to approx. EUR 2 mill.