CS Professor Awarded 2.5 Million From European Research Council

03-13-2014

Writer(s): Jesica Hollinger

Patrick Eugster, associate professor of computer science, was awarded a $2.5 million grant from The European Research Council (ERC) to benefit his two main areas of research, distributed systems and programming languages.

The ERC creates opportunities typically at the level of associate professor through a series of highly selective “Consolidator Grants” that were created to support individuals when they are at the point of their career when they are leading larger research efforts.

Eugster mentioned that the grant is beneficial to his primary target areas of research.

“The research straddles the two traditional areas of distributed systems and programming languages and is non-incremental, which makes it hard to get common funding agencies on board whose proposal evaluation process is based on reviews by experts in individual areas. This grant will help me hire researchers with strong expertise in either domain and elicit their collaboration under my guidance and education,” said Eugster.

The council’s goal is to ultimately bring new ideas and energy to the European Union. Eugster will be on leave from his position at Purdue for fifty-percent of the project.