Introduction

The European Research Council (ERC) provides attractive, long-term funding to support excellent investigators and their research teams to pursue ground-breaking, high gain and high risk research. The ERC is a key component of Horizon Europe and complements other European research and innovation platforms, such as those of the national research funding agencies.

Call objectives

The ERC operates four main grant programmes to support projects, and investigators, at progressive stages of development: this Advanced Grant, plus the Proof of Concept Grant, Starting Grant and Consolidator Grant.

Research funded by the ERC is expected to lead to advances at the frontiers of knowledge and to set a clear and inspirational target for frontier research across Europe. It operates using an 'investigator-driven' approach based solely on scientific excellence to solicit new opportunities and directions in any field of research, as identified by researchers themselves, rather than support priorities set by parties outside of the research community. This 'bottom-up' attitude to research funding ensures that support is aimed primarily at new and promising opportunities, with a greater degree of flexibility.

Running in parallel with its research funding support objectives, the ERC also aims to fortify and shape the European research system, piloted by high quality peer review, the establishment of international benchmarks of success, and the provision of up-to-date information on who is succeeding and why.

Overall, the ERC aims to:

• Support the best of the best in Europe across all fields of science, scholarship and engineering.
• Promote wholly investigator-driven or 'bottom-up' frontier research.
• Encourage the work of the established and next generation of independent top research leaders in Europe.
• Reward innovative proposals by placing emphasis on the quality of the idea rather than the research area.
• Raise the status and visibility of European frontier research and the very best researchers of today and tomorrow.

Applications may be made in any field of research. Support is available for frontier research. Proposals that cross disciplinary boundaries, pioneering ideas that address new and emerging fields and applications that introduce unconventional, innovative approaches are particularly encouraged. Applicant Principal Investigators must demonstrate the ground breaking nature, ambition and feasibility of their scientific proposal.

Beneficiaries of ERC grants must ensure open access to all peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to their results.

Budget

The 2021 budget for Consolidator Grants is €633 million to fund an estimated 317 grants.

Individual grant levels vary as follows:

• Up to a maximum of €2 million for a period of five years.
• Additionally, up to €1 million can be requested to cover:
  • Eligible 'start-up' costs for Principal Investigators moving to the EU or an Associated Country from elsewhere as a consequence of receiving the ERC grant.
  • Purchase of major equipment.
  • Access to large facilities.
  • Other major experimental and field work costs, excluding personnel costs.

Eligible project costs will be reimbursed at a funding rate of 100% for direct costs plus a flat-rate of 25% for indirect costs.

Requested costs must be justified on the basis of the costs incurred for the project, and received funds may be lower than the budget requested.

Eligibility

Researchers of any nationality with 7-12 years of experience since completion of PhD (Extensions are possible under certain circumstances, a scientific track record showing great promise and an excellent research proposal.

A competitive Consolidator Grant Principal Investigator must have already shown research independence and evidence of maturity, for example by having produced several important publications as main author or without the participation of their PhD supervisor. Applicant Principal Investigators should also be able to demonstrate a promising track record of early achievements appropriate to their research field and career stage, including significant publications (as mainauthor) in major international peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journals, or in the leading international peer-reviewed journals of their respective field. They may also demonstrate a record of invited presentations in well-established international conferences, granted patents, awards, prizes,etc.

In the Track Record the applicant Principal Investigator should list (if applicable):

1. Up to ten publications in major international peer-reviewed multi-disciplinary scientific journals and/or in the leading international peer-reviewed journals, peer-reviewed conferences proceedings and/or monographs of their respective research fields, highlighting those as main author or without the presence as co-author of their PhD supervisor(properly referenced, field relevant bibliometric indicators may also be included);preprints may be included, if freely available from a preprint server (preprints should be properly referenced and either a link to the preprint or a DOI should be provided).
2.  Research monographs and any translations thereof;
3. Granted patent(s);
4. Invited presentations to internationally established conferences and/or international advanced schools;
5. Prizes, awards, academy memberships

Application

Applications are made online through the Funds and Tender portal.. Proposals are submitted by the Principal Investigator who has scientific responsibility for the project, on behalf of the host institution.

2021 deadlines:

• Call opens: 11 March 2021.
• Call deadline: 20 April 2021.

A single submission of the full proposal will be followed by a two-step evaluation. For all ERC frontier research grants, scientific excellence is the sole criterion of evaluation. The evaluation will be conducted by high level peer review panels. Applicant Principal Investigators can request during the electronic proposal submission that up to three specific persons should not act as a peer reviewer in the evaluation of their proposal.

It is expected that Principal Investigators will be able to start their project within six months of receiving an invitation letter from the ERC.

In case of interest, please contact lnorton(ELIMINAR)@fsjd.org