Recently, Assistant Professor Rico Krueger from our group received the prestigious European Research Council Starting Grant for his project, IMMERSION: Explaining Human Decision-Making by Combining Choice and Process Data!

Over the five-year duration of the IMMERSION project, Rico and his team will establish a novel framework to understand and predict human behavior in hypothetical and futuristic scenarios. This includes developing new models that integrate choice and process data, designing new statistical inference procedures tailored to these models, and creating innovative methods for collecting rich behavioral data through immersive experiments using extended reality.

The project will also involve extensive empirical work, with significant implications for human-centered design in future transport and infrastructure systems. The European Research Council (ERC) recently announced the award of 494 Starting Grants, distributing nearly €780 million to young scientists and scholars across Europe.

This ERC funding is part of the EU Horizon Europe programme, supporting cutting-edge research across diverse fields. The ERC is Europe’s premier funding body for frontier research, offering grants to researchers of all nationalities and ages across the continent.

Out of 3,474 proposals evaluated by peer-review panels composed of internationally renowned researchers, 14.2% were selected for funding, highlighting the significance and quality of these projects.

Huge congratulations to Rico!