Associate Professor Eve Hoggan has been awarded the highly prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council, for her project MIRA - Multimodal Interaction for Remote Physical Artefacts.

Remote collaboration has become central to modern work life. Yet when physical tools, materials, or prototypes are crucial, today’s digital technologies fall short. They lack the tactile and spatial qualities that shape how we handle and understand physical objects.

The MIRA project aims to overcome this challenge by creating multimodal technologies that let people interact with physical objects remotely, not only seeing them but also feeling and manipulating them together across distance.

“Remote work has expanded our possibilities, but we still lose something essential when physical objects are involved. With MIRA, we want to make collaboration feel physically present again, no matter the distance,” says Eve Hoggan.

The project aims to:

• Develop the first theoretical framework for interaction with remote physical artefacts

• Build new multimodal technologies that simulate touch, sound and movement

• Go beyond physical replication of objects by exploring new possibilities for richer and more engaging remote collaboration

These advances could open new forms of teamwork in many fields of work, enable more accessible learning environments worldwide, and reduce the need for travel.

The ERC Consolidator Grant is one of Europe’s most prestigious and competitive research funding programmes. It supports exceptional mid-career researchers in building strong and creative research teams in Europe. 349 researchers have been selected for funding this year, based at institutions across 25 EU Member States and associated countries. The ERC received 3,121 applications, reflecting record demand, and will invest €728 million in breakthrough research through this call. For more information see the press release issued by the European Research Council.