The grant recognises Anders Møller as one of Europe's leading researchers and will enable him and his team to pursue ambitious, high-risk research aimed at strengthening the security of the software that underpins modern society.

Securing the software supply chain

Modern software is rarely built from scratch. Instead, developers rely heavily on open-source libraries, frameworks, and tools created and maintained by others. While this approach has dramatically increased productivity and innovation, it has also created new security challenges.

Vulnerabilities, malicious code, and breaking software changes can spread through the software supply chain and affect countless applications, organisations, and users. These risks have become particularly significant in widely used programming languages such as JavaScript and Python, which form the foundation of today's digital infrastructure.

The ProSec project seeks to address these challenges by developing new methods for analysing software code and open-source software packages before security issues reach end-users.

Detecting threats before they cause harm

The project's central hypothesis is that advances in program analysis can fundamentally improve software supply chain security. By creating new analysis techniques for dynamic programming languages, ProSec aims to make it possible to analyse applications and open-source software packages with unprecedented precision and scalability.

As software powers everything from businesses and public services to critical infrastructure, improving software supply chain security has implications far beyond the technology sector.

If successful, the project could lead to major breakthroughs in program analysis and significantly improve the security and robustness of software systems used across society.

About the ERC Advanced Grant

ERC Advanced Grants are among the most competitive and prestigious research grants in Europe, awarded only to established researchers with exceptional scientific track records and groundbreaking research ideas. The grants provide long-term funding for ambitious, curiosity-driven projects that have the potential to generate major scientific breakthroughs.

ERC Advanced Grants can provide up to €2.5 million over five years and are awarded solely based on scientific excellence through a highly competitive international peer-review proces. A record of 3,329 proposals was submitted this year, up 31% from 2,534 last year. 9.6% of proposals were selected for funding. See complete list of grantees here.