No fewer than four Vrije Universiteit Brussel researchers are receiving the European Commission's prestigious European Research Council Starting Grant this year. Togtether, the four grants total more than €6,3 mil. in research funds. Researchers Liliana Lizarazo-Rodriguez, Martin Virte, Christophe Snoeck and Kevin Smets and their respective teams will use the ERC Starter Grants to carry out research in fields spanning human rights and ecology, integrated photonics, bioarcheology and borders in fiction films. This is one of the first times that a Starter Grant is being awarded to a project focused on film. Since the launch of the European Commission's Horizon 2020 programme in 2014, Vrije Universiteit Brussel has won backing for more than 160 research and innovation projects, totalling €78 million in European funding.