How the ERC transformed science - 15 stories
Categories: European R&I Update
Tags: ERC | European Research Excellence
The ERC grantees – 10 000 and counting – are making a real impact on people’s lives, expanding the frontiers of human knowledge, transforming research through interdisciplinary collaborations, achieving scientific breakthroughs that drive innovation.
Want to know more? Click here to discover 15 amazing stories illustrating how the ERC transformed science.
About the ERC
The ERC's mission is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields, on the basis of scientific excellence.
The ERC complements other funding activities in Europe such as those of the national research funding agencies, and is a flagship component of Horizon Europe, the European Union's Research Framework Programme for 2021 to 2027.
Being 'investigator-driven', or 'bottom-up', in nature, the ERC approach allows researchers to identify new opportunities and directions in any field of research, rather than being led by priorities set by politicians. This ensures that funds are channelled into new and promising areas of research with a greater degree of flexibility.
ERC grants are awarded through open competition to projects headed by starting and established researchers, irrespective of their origins, who are working or moving to work in Europe. The sole criterion for selection is scientific excellence. The aim here is to recognise the best ideas, and confer status and visibility on the best brains in Europe, while also attracting talent from abroad.