Research Award

Veit Hornung is one of the 2020 ERC advanced grantees.

Veit Hornung, Professor of Immunochemistry, is interested in the innate immune system which is responsible for the recognition and selective elimination of invaders.
His research in this field contributes to the development of therapies that mitigate or prevent autoimmune diseases. For his next project (short title ‘ENGINES’), Hornung has now received one of the coveted Advanced Grants awarded by the ERC. These awards are worth up to 2.5 million euros (and in exceptional cases as much as 3.5 million euros). They are intended for established investigators who wish to carry out highly innovative research programs that have ground-breaking character and promise to open up new fields.

The acronym ‘ENGINES’ stands for “molecular and functional characterization of EmergiNG INflammasomES”, and refers to the project’s primary objectives – the identification of novel inflammasomes and the elucidation of their modes of action.

For more details please read the LMU press release.

Among numerous other awards, Veit Hornung received the Coley Award for distinguished research in basic and tumor immunology in 2020. In 2018, the DFG awarded him with the Leibniz Prize for his outstanding work about the mechanisms which are employed by the innate immune system to distinguish self from non-self or harmless from dangerous, respectively.

For more information about Veit Hornung and his research, please visit the Hornung lab website.
All ERC Advanced Grant 2020 awardees and their projects can be found on the ERC website.