The European Research Council announced today the nine finalists of its Public Engagement with Research Award. Voting has opened to choose the public’s preferred candidate from among the finalists.
The Award was established to recognize those ERC grantees who successfully engage audiences outside their domain. The laureates selected by the jury and the winner of the public vote will be revealed at EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) on July 14th, 2022 during the ceremony starting at 10:00 AM ET (4:00 PM CEST) and livestreamed on the ERC YouTube channel (see embedded video below).
List of finalists in three categories:
Award category: Involve - citizen science
Antonio Acín (Fundacio Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques): Worldwide lab: an experiment on every continent at once
Roberta D’Alessandro (Utrecht University): Italian dialect speakers documenting their own heritage in the Americas
Mariska Kret (Leiden University): Bringing science to the zoo, involving the public into the study of great apes emotions
Award category: Inspire - public outreach
Craig Morgan (King’s College London): Working with youth to understand and solve mental health problems
Artur Obłuski (University of Warsaw): Engaging local community in Sudan to promote archaeological heritage
Jonathan Tennyson (University College London): Engaging students in original research, inspiring science careers
Award category: Influence - media and policy
Alpa Shah (London School of Economics and Political Science): Challenging inequalities, countering oppression
Hila Shamir’s (Tel-Aviv University Faculty of Law): Tackling human trafficking together
Tanja Stadler (ETH Zurich): Creating scientific impact in the pandemic
Learn more about the public engagement projects that got to the finals and vote for your favorite below!
You can watch the public vote announcement at ESOF live on July 14th here:
About the ERC
The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants, and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialization. The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. Since November 1st, 2021, Maria Leptin is the President of the ERC. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion, as part of the Horizon Europe programme, under the responsibility of the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel.