03/09/2026
Betül Uralcan-Kılavuz of Sabancı University has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant, one of Europe’s most prestigious and competitive research funding schemes, for her project BIOIONICS - Biologically Inspired Ion Selectivity in Nanopores. BIOIONICS is the only project from Türkiye selected for funding under the 2026 ERC Starting Grant call. Supporting original and pioneering research, the ERC Starting Grant will provide €1.5 million in funding for BIOIONICS.
How do biological ion channels distinguish between ions that are nearly identical in size and charge, while still transporting them at remarkably high rates? This ability lies at the heart of many biological processes, yet the molecular principles that reconcile selectivity with efficient transport remain incompletely understood.
BIOIONICS will address this fundamental problem by resolving the rare molecular events that govern ion permeation and uncovering how kinetics and thermodynamics combine to produce selectivity. Its central ambition is to determine whether these principles can be abstracted from biological channels and transferred to synthetic nanopores.
Rather than reproducing biological channels directly, the project seeks to uncover the general physical and chemical principles behind their exceptional performance and determine how far these principles can guide engineered systems. By bridging biological mechanisms and synthetic design, BIOIONICS aims to establish a general mechanistic framework for understanding selective ion transport and guiding the rational design of ion-selective systems. In the longer term, such principles could inform new approaches to selective separations, desalination, electrochemical energy storage, and bioinspired sensing.
The five-year project will be hosted by Sabancı University, where Uralcan will build an interdisciplinary research team integrating molecular modeling, advanced simulation techniques, and data-driven approaches with experimental collaborations. Boğaziçi University will contribute to the research program as an additional beneficiary.
The development of the BIOIONICS proposal benefited from the support of TÜBİTAK’s ERC Principal Investigator Development Program (EBAG), as well as institutional support provided by Sabancı University and Boğaziçi University.
