Skip to content Skip to primary navigation
Contact us
News

Tak­ing the next step: EU awards €575 mil­lion to mid-career researchers

15.01.2014
This new fund­ing will enable the research­ers to con­sol­id­ate their own teams and to fur­ther devel­op their best ideas. Total fund­ing in this round is €575 mil­lion, with an aver­age awar­ded grant of €1.84 mil­lion, up to a max­im­um of €2.75 mil­lion. European Com­mis­sion­er for Research, Innov­a­tion and Sci­ence Máire Geoghegan-Quinn said: ​“These research­ers are doing ground-break­ing work that will advance our know­ledge and make a dif­fer­ence to soci­ety. The ERC is sup­port­ing them at a key moment where fund­ing is often hard to come by: when they need to move for­ward in their career and devel­op their own research and teams.” The ERC calls tar­get top research­ers of any nation­al­ity based in, or will­ing to move to, Europe. In this call, grants are awar­ded to research­ers of 33 dif­fer­ent nation­al­it­ies, hos­ted in insti­tu­tions loc­ated in 21 dif­fer­ent coun­tries through­out Europe, with 9 of them host­ing five grantees or more. In terms of host insti­tu­tions, the UK (62 grants), Ger­many (43) and France (42) are in the lead. There are also research­ers hos­ted at insti­tu­tions in the Neth­er­lands, Switzer­land, Spain, Italy, Israel, Bel­gi­um, Sweden, Aus­tria, Den­mark, Fin­land, Por­tugal, Greece, Hun­gary, Ire­land, Tur­key, Cyprus, the Czech Repub­lic and Nor­way. In terms of research­ers’ nation­al­ity Ger­mans (48 grants) and Itali­ans (46) are at the top, fol­lowed by French (33), Brit­ish (31) and Dutch (27) research­ers (see stat­ist­ics here). Over 3600 pro­pos­als were sub­mit­ted to this first sep­ar­ate ERC Con­sol­id­at­or Grant com­pet­i­tion. The share of women amongst the suc­cess­ful can­did­ates in this call (24%) increased in com­par­is­on with the equi­val­ent mid-career group in the 2012 Start­ing Grant call (22.5%). The aver­age age of the selec­ted research­ers is 39. Around 45% of the grantees selec­ted are in the domain ​‘Phys­ic­al Sci­ences and Engin­eer­ing’, 37% in ​‘Life Sci­ences’ and almost 19% in ​‘Social Sci­ences and Human­it­ies’. The grantees were selec­ted through peer review eval­u­ation by 25 pan­els com­posed of renowned sci­ent­ists from around the world.

Back­ground

Due to increas­ing sub­mis­sion num­bers, since 2013 the ERC Start­ing Grant scheme has been split in two: the ERC Start­ing Grant, tar­geted at research­ers with at least 2 and up to 7 years’ exper­i­ence after their PhD; and the new ERC Con­sol­id­at­or Grant for research­ers with over 7 and up to 12 years’ exper­i­ence after their PhD. The pre­vi­ous Start­ing Grant call (2012) had two sub-streams (“starters” and ​“con­sol­id­at­ors”), which cor­res­pon­ded to the cur­rent divi­sion. The demand for the Con­sol­id­at­or Grants rose by 46% this year, com­pared to the cor­res­pond­ing group of applic­ants in 2012.

The ERC Con­sol­id­at­or Grant in brief:

  • For top research­ers of any nation­al­ity and age, with over 7 and up to 12 years’ exper­i­ence after PhD, and a sci­entif­ic track record show­ing great promise.
  • Based on a simple approach: 1 research­er, 1 host insti­tu­tion, 1 pro­ject, 1 selec­tion cri­terion: excellence
  • Host insti­tu­tion should be based in the European Research Area (EU Mem­ber States plus coun­tries asso­ci­ated with the EU research pro­gramme). No con­sor­tia. No co-fund­ing is required.
  • Fund­ing: up to €2.75 mil­lion per grant for up to 5 years
  • Calls for pro­pos­als: pub­lished annu­ally. See updated inform­a­tion on the upcom­ing calls here.
The grants in this latest com­pet­i­tion will allow the sci­ent­ists selec­ted to build their own research teams, enga­ging in total an estim­ated 1100 postdocs and PhD stu­dents as ERC team mem­bers. The ERC grant schemes tar­get top research­ers of any nation­al­ity, based in, or will­ing to move to, Europe. Set up in 2007 by the EU, the European Research Coun­cil is the first pan-European fund­ing organ­isa­tion for excel­lent fron­ti­er research. From 2007 to 2013, under the sev­enth EU Research Frame­work Pro­gramme (FP7), the ERC’s budget was €7.5 bil­lion. Under the new Frame­work Pro­gramme for Research and Innov­a­tion (2014−2020), Hori­zon 2020, the ERC has a sub­stan­tially increased budget of over €13 bil­lion. Source: European Parlament
All news