Groningen C14 researcher Michael Dee has been awarded a 2 million euro ERC Consolidator Grant. He will be studying the contact between Europe and America before Columbus.
Cardiologist Peter van der Meer, who studies heart failure, was also awarded a Consolidator Grant.
Dee made headlines all over the world last year when he discovered that Vikings had already travelled to North America by the year 1021. While we already knew they’d travelled there, we didn’t know when.
Dee made the discovery by using a revolutionary dating method. He managed to find evidence of a great solar storm in the year 992 in tree rings: the C14 level in the ring showed a small spike because of it. After that, all he had to do was count rings.
Meetings
The current study wants to continue where the previous left off. Dee wants to find out more about the contact between America and Europe: who the Vikings encountered and what impact this had.
Cardiologist Peter van der Meer was also awarded an ERC Grant. Van der Meer wants to find out more about the sensitivity to developing heart failure. He wants to do this by using 3D tissue and stem cells. In the end, he wants to develop better treatment methods.