Last Wednesday we hosted Maribel Glogowski, our UKRO
representative, who gave a thoughtful overview of the European Research
Council (ERC) and offered insights into how best to target the
funder. Dr Heather Ferguson, who recently won a
Starting Grant, joined her to offer an invaluable viewpoint from
someone who had been through the process.
Background
The ERC has been one of the great success stories of the
EC's Framework Programme. The prestigious, responsive mode fellowships were
clearly what the European research community wanted, and this was demonstrated
in the heavy oversubscription of the first call for Starting Grants in 2007,
when over 9,000 people applied for just 300 awards, giving a success rate of
just 3.4%.
Since then the situation has settled down, and now the
Starting Grant success rate is actually broadly in line with that of the ESRC
at 12%. In Horizon 2020, the ERC is part of the
'Excellent Science' pillar, which funds responsive mode research. Of the total
€24.2bn budget for the pillar, the ERC has almost half (€13.1bn). It provides
five types of grants:
●
Starting Grants:
up to €2m for 5 years for investigators 2-7 years from PhD
●
Consolidator
Grants: up to €2.75m for 5 years for investigators 7-14 years from PhD
●
Advanced Grants:
up to €3.5m for 5 years (no set career point restriction, but investigators
must be well established leaders in their fields)
●
Synergy Grants: up
to €15m for 2-4 investigators. The scheme is currently on hold.
●
Proof of Concept
Grants: for ERC award holders: up to €150k for 18 months.
