The UPM researcher Efrén Fernández Grande receives an ERC Consolidator Grant 2025
The ERC Consolidator Grant 2025, one of Europe’s most prestigious recognitions for research excellence and has been granted to the UPM researcher for his project SONIFY
09.12.2025
The Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) proudly announces the award of an ERC Consolidator Grant 2025, one of Europe’s most prestigious recognitions for research excellence. The winning project, SONIFY, led by Efrén Fernández Grande, offers an ambitious and groundbreaking vision: to redefine the way we capture and understand sound.
What is SONIFY?
Although today we live surrounded by microphones—on mobile phones, computers, cars, headphones, and smart devices—the truth is that the technology for “recording” sound has barely changed in almost 200 years. We usually measure what happens at a single point, as if sound were something static.
However, sound is a complex spatial phenomenon: it shifts, reflects, surrounds objects, its waves interfere, and they change as they propagate through every corner of space. Current acoustic technology still cannot faithfully capture that spatial dimension, which is so rich and important.
“The goal of SONIFY is to develop techniques that allow us to faithfully capture that spatial dimension and enable interaction with sound fields across extensive spatial domains for the first time,” explains the researcher, who adds: “This work aims to achieve a seamless integration between sound existing in real spaces and sound generated synthetically, offering unprecedented capabilities for the analysis and handling of sound fields.
What is the purpose of capturing 3D sound?
The possibilities are enormous. As Efrén explains, there are countless applications and contexts where these advances could have a significant impact on our daily lives—from improving a video call to helping us sleep without noise or making conversations clearer for people with hearing difficulties.
What applications will we see in the future?
“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to predict in the long term. We can anticipate improvements in immersive technology, intelligent audio processing in devices, artificial intelligence, materials for acoustic treatment, and architecture. I also believe we’ll see advanced outdoor noise-cancellation systems, new hearing technologies, and user-centered assisted technologies, as well as a better understanding of how sound interacts with individuals in complex contexts.”
A world-Class international recognition
Obtaining an ERC Consolidator Grant is an extraordinary achievement: only the most groundbreaking projects with the greatest potential receive this support from the European Research Council. For the UPM researcher, “it represents an enormous international recognition and provides an exceptional opportunity to lead an ambitious scientific agenda, exploring innovative ideas that—beyond the impact on the PI’s career—have the potential to significantly advance the scientific field in question.”
About the researcher
Efrén Fernandez Grande is a Distinguished Researcher at the Universidad Politècnica de Madrid (Department of Audiovisual Engineering and Communications at ETSIST), where he joined in 2024 after spending more than 15 years at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), with international stays at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of California San Diego (UCSD), and the Institut Langevin in Paris, among others. He is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, and his research work is backed by highly prestigious distinctions.
The ERC Program: driving breakthrough scientific projects
The European Research Council (ERC) promotes and supports the development of cutting-edge, disruptive research across all fields of knowledge. The ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-CoG) call is designed to support researchers who are in the process of consolidating their teams or research lines.
Based solely on the criterion of scientific excellence, 349 projects have been awarded this prestigious funding in the ERC-CoG 2025 call, enabling ambitious and transformative ideas to be carried out in Europe. This call has been described by ERC President Maria Leptin as one of the most competitive ERC calls ever, with a record number of proposals submitted (3,121) and high scientific quality.
We are pleased to include SONIFY among the projects at UPM that have received funding from the ERC within Horizon Europe.
TRANSDIFFUSE- SyG (Eusebio Valero-ETSIAE)
MIRACLE CoG (Sergio Fernández Garrido-ISOM)
OFF-COUSTICS CoG (Esteban Ferrer-ETSIAE)
CausT AdG (Javier Jiménez Sendín-ETSIAE)