On November 22, 2022, the European Research Council announced the ERC call results for researchers starting an independent research career (ERC Starting Grant 2022). This year, the ERC considered 2932 project proposals from all scientific fields and selected 408 for funding. Among the selected proposals is also the project of our colleague, Dr. Zala Lenarčič, who will receive almost 1.5 million euros for her five-year project “Weakly driven quantum symmetries (DrumS)”. The DrumS project aims to explore the realistic potential of non-equilibrium quantum systems with symmetries. Strange symmetries in physics are theoretically attractive, but it is almost impossible to find them in nature or realize them in an experiment. The DrumS project would like to show that driving realistic systems with approximate symmetries can induce exotic states that are fundamentally surprising but could also find applications in quantum technologies. This is the sixth ERC project for the IJS, following the successful applications of Dr. D. Mihailović, Dr. D. I. Muševič, Dr. P. Križan, Dr. M. Humar, and Dr. M. Lozinšek.