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EU awards 287 early career researchers €400 Mio in 'blue-sky' funding
The European Research Council (ERC) has selected 287 top early career
scientists for funding in its sixth Starting Grant competition, enabling them to
pursue cutting-edge fundamental research.
The researchers will receive nearly €400 Million in total, with grants
worth up to €2 million each over up to five years.
Competition for these prestigious awards continued to increase, with
overall demand for grants up by 50% this year.
There was also an increase in the share of successful female
researchers, from 24% to 30% of all candidates.
This Starting Grant competition was the last under the EU's Seventh
Research Framework Programme (FP7).
The next calls will fall under the new EU research and innovation
programme Horizon 2020, which foresees a major increase in funding for the ERC.
The projects selected cover a wide range of topics, such as designing a
unique coastal defence against tsunamis, developing high-tech radiotherapy that
can potentially help patients of Head-and-Neck cancer, investigating real-time
monitoring of air pollution by means of GPS technology, or producing new
low-cost and more effective photovoltaics.
Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science Máire Geoghegan-Quinn
said:
"The European Research Council has changed the research landscape for
young talent, and raised the level of science across Europe.
It is funding blue-sky research that is advancing human knowledge, but
also producing breakthroughs that could make their way into our daily lives in
future.
The ERC is now an established label of excellence, and it will go from
strength to strength under Horizon 2020."
This call attracted 3,329 proposals, a 50% increase compared to the
corresponding group last year.
Due to the substantially increased competition, only 9% of applicants
were successful.
Grants are being awarded to researchers of 34 different nationalities
hosted in 162 different institutions throughout Europe.
The Starting Grants are for researchers of any nationality with 2-7
years of experience since completion of PhD (or equivalent degree), and a
scientific track record showing great promise.
The average age of selected researchers in this sixth competition is
around 34 years.
Background
In this call, 44% of the applicants were selected in the domain
'Physical Sciences and Engineering', 38% in 'Life Sciences' and 18% in 'Social
Sciences and Humanities'.
The grantees were selected through peer review evaluation by 25 panels
composed of renowned scientists from around the world.
ERC Starting Grants are awarded researchers of any nationality with 2-7
years of experience since completion of PhD (or equivalent degree) and
scientific track record showing great promise.
Research must be conducted in a public or private research organisation
(known as a Host Institution) located in one of the EU Member States or
Associated Countries.
Funding provided is up to a maximum of €2 million (per grant), provided
over up to five years.
Calls for proposals are published once a year.
The ERC calls for Starting Grants and other grant schemes target top
researchers of any nationality, based in, or willing to move to, Europe.
The grants in this latest competition will also allow the funded
scientists to build their own research teams, engaging in total over 1,000
postdocs and PhD students as ERC team members.
The ERC thereby contributes to supporting a new generation of top
researchers in Europe.
Set up in 2007 by the EU, the European Research Council is the first
pan-European funding organisation for frontier research.
The ERC, which is the newest, pioneering component of the EU's Seventh
Research Framework Programme ('Ideas' Specific Programme), has a total budget of
€7.5 billion from 2007 to 2013.