The real world is too complex to be modelled in detail, so a Dutch researcher is helping computers prioritise what’s important to get things done

Sure, computers can do sums. But can they think like a mathematician? In Prague Josef Urban wants to make computers prove theorems

Swiss researchers visit a watch-making school, to teach robots to think like a craftsman

Artificial intelligence could transform our world. But first, ERC researchers are trying to answer the basic questions – about life and the universe – that AI poses

Acoustics research powers cinema sound and virtual reality gaming. Figuring out how sound bounces of the walls of an auditorium is also essential to designing concert halls

Around 4% of the population suffers from ‘amusia’ – a disorder affecting the perception and production of pitch in music. Understanding this phenomenon could help a seemingly unrelated group: people with autism.

ERC researcher Michael Ellison is bringing classical Turkish and Western musicians together at a big scientific conference, to show the intersections between two very different musical traditions.

Researchers make the case for businesses based on breakthrough science funded by the EU and consider how to raise the private capital needed to speed innovations to market

Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer and climate scientist at Utrecht University runs a European Research Council-funded project called TOPIOS (Tracking Of Plastic In Our Seas). Its goal is to vastly improve our understanding of the way plastic litter moves through our oceans.

“Music is the shorthand of emotion,” Leo Tolstoy once wrote in a letter to his wife. If so, how exactly does that emotional language work?