€705 million awarded to Europe’s next generation of researchers

The European Research Council (ERC) has announced the winners of its latest Starting Grant competition, awarding €705 million to 421 early-career researchers across Europe. The grants will support them at a crucial stage of their careers, helping them pursue ambitious ideas and build their own teams.

The results highlight Europe’s growing attractiveness for world-class research talent. 21 successful researchers currently based outside Europe will now relocate to the EU and Horizon Europe associate countries (up from 11 last year) to carry out their projects.

Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research, and Innovation, said: “Congratulations to all the successful applicants. I am particularly pleased to see that 21 researchers currently based in the United States and Canada plan to relocate to Europe to pursue their work. Their decision reflects Europe’s growing appeal for frontier research and is an encouraging sign that the EU’s Choose Europe initiative is helping to attract the next generation of scientific talent while reinforcing Europe’s position as a destination of choice for excellent research.”

This year’s competition drew a record 4,807 proposals, representing a 22% increase compared with last year’s 3,928 applications. Due to strong competition, only 8.8% of proposals could be funded. Interest also rose among researchers based outside of Europe. In particular, 169 researchers based in the United States applied this year, up from 116 in the previous call.

The selected projects cover a broad spectrum of research fields from life sciences and engineering to social sciences and humanities. The new grantees will be hosted by universities and research centres in 25 EU Member States and associated countries, notably in Germany (89 grants), France (38), Switzerland (36), and the Netherlands (33). Among the winners are 84 Germans, 50 Italians, 30 French, and 24 Spanish, as well as researchers of 48 other nationalities. The grants are expected to create more than 3,000 jobs in the teams of the new grantees.

As part of the Choose Europe initiative to attract and retain scientific talent, researchers moving to Europe can request up to an extra €2 million to set up laboratories or research teams in Europe.

Source: European Commission