The ERC awarded 408 early career researchers with its prestigious starting grants. Among them 31 scientists hosted at Swiss institutions.
On 3 September, the ERC announced the winners of its latest round of Starting Grants within the Horizon 2020 (H2020) programmes. The Starting Grants will help their recipients build up their own research groups and conduct fundamental research across different disciplines. The total of EUR 621 million in funding go to 408 researchers (154 female and 254 male) from 51 different countries, which is the broadest diversity among grantees ever. The researchers will conduct their work in 24 different EU and H2020 associated countries, where many are moving to from outside Europe. The ERC starting grants are therefore an excellent instrument to attract young talent. Grants are grouped into Physical Sciences and Engineering (PE, 178 awards), Life Sciences (LS, 115 awards) and Social Sciences and Humanities (SH, 115 awards) (see statistics). The researchers receive maximum EUR 2.5 million per grant and must conclude their projects within five years. Since the awarded scientists will build their own teams, the grants equally contribute to the creation of PhD and post-doc positions.
With 31 grants, Switzerland will host the 6th highest number of awarded projects behind Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France and Israel. Swiss applicants are most successful in Physical Science and Engineering, where most of the applications stem from too. While eight of the total 408 grantees have Swiss nationality, only five of them will conduct their projects in their home country. The rest will venture out to institutions in EU or associated countries and contribute to brain circulation across Europe. In turn, most of the grantees at Swiss institutions stem from abroad and the country lags only behind the UK and the Netherlands with respect to third country grantees at its institutions and hosting foreign talent in Europe.
The Starting Grants mark the first completed ERC call for proposals of the 2019 round. The results for Synergy Grants will follow on 31 October, and the Consolidator Grants and Advanced Grants in mid-December 2019 and mid-April 2020 respectively.