Tenure Track Assistant Professor Jens Emil Grønbæk has been awarded a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant for his project BRIDGE – Blending Realities for Interaction across Distributed Group Environments. 

The BRIDGE project addresses one of the biggest challenges in hybrid and remote work: how to make Mixed Reality collaboration feel as natural and creative as working side by side, while extending people’s remote interactions with new virtual capabilities. Jens Emil will develop new tools and concepts so people in different physical spaces can collaborate around shared surfaces such as desks and whiteboards - and still understand each other’s gestures, movements, and presence as if they were in the same room. 

To do this, BRIDGE introduces the idea of Blended Proxemics  - a framework for keeping those important “spatial signals” (like pointing at something or turning toward a colleague) intact, even across dissimilar spaces. 

Through the creation of a Blended Living Lab, the project will test these ideas in real-world settings across continents, industries, and disciplines – from LEGO designers sharing prototypes remotely to researchers co-creating across labs. If successful, BRIDGE could make distributed teamwork more engaging, reduce the need for travel, and open new possibilities for sustainable global collaboration. 

Looking for researchers  

With the ERC Starting Grant, Jens Emil is looking to add more people to his research team. Currently, he is on the lookout for 2-3 PhD students and a Postdoc. If interested, you can reach out to him via email: jensemil@cs.au.dk. Postdocs can be hired continuously thoughot the year, while PhD students must apply via the Graduate School of Natural Sciences. The next application deadline is November 1. 

Read more about Jens Emil and his research interests in our recent interview: https://cs.au.dk/news-events/meet-our-new-faculty-member-jens-emil-groenbaek. Want to know more about BRIDGE? Check out the new website blendedrealities.org   

About the ERC Starting Grant 

ERC Starting Grants support talented early-career scientists in establishing their own research teams and programs. The grants are awarded based on scientific excellence and provide up to €1.5 million over five years to pursue ambitious, high-risk projects. Read the offcial annoucement about the 2025 Starting Grant recipients from ERC here.