The European Research Council (ERC) published its annual report 2018 on 15 March. The report highlights the activities and achievements of the ERC in its just over ten years history, during which more than 9’000 research projects of grantees with 77 nationalities have been funded. EU Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science Carlos Moedas refers to the ERC as a success story of Europe and calls for creating a brand of scientific excellence known globally by everyone.
In his foreword, the President of the ERC and Chair of its Scientific Council, Prof. Jean-Pierre Bourguignon recalls that the preparation for the next R&I framework programme Horizon Europe has occupied many minds last year. Discussions with the European Commission (EC) and the European Parliament (EP) have challenged the cornerstones of the ERC. He emphasises that scientific quality as the only criterion is the foundation of the ERC evaluation and the basis of its success. The Scientific Council was thus happy to see that the EC adopted scientific excellence, continuity, agility and scale-up in its proposal for the ERC in Horizon Europe.
The report puts the works done by the Scientific Council, the ERC Executive Agency (ERCEA) and the more than 10’000 scientists who contributed to evaluation of proposals in the spotlight. It reports on the numbers of projects funded, publications reported and budget spent by the ERC since its establishment in 2007. The grants of the ERC have led to a net inflow of talent in almost all participating EU and associated countries, many of them from outside Europe including a large part from the US. Swiss institutions like ETH Zurich, EPFL and the University of Zurich figure among the top host institutions for ERC funded principal investigators.
In addition to an overview of activities featuring a conference on artificial intelligence and the European Science Open Forum (ESOF), the report also presents a study on the career impacts of ERC funding. It shows that more than 70% of starting grant and consolidator grant principal investigators benefited from an upwards career mobility. The report also features the re-launch of the synergy grants, which resulted in subscriptions small enough to handle, but large enough to test the new evaluation system, which will guarantee a fairer treatment to interdisciplinary projects. Moreover, the ERC underwent several new international agreements outside Europe, which will allow scientists from Japan and Australia to join ERC teams.
The report is a good showcase of the manifold ERC funded research projects and provides in depth statistics of all calls throughout 2018.