Are you an established, leading principal investigator who wants long-term funding to pursue a ground-breaking, ambitious project? The ERC Advanced Grant could be for you. Advanced Grants may be awarded up to 2.5M€ for 5 years.
Deadline: 29th August 2024
Objectives
The fundamental activity of the European Research Council (ERC), via its main frontier research grants, is to provide attractive, long-term funding to support excellent investigators (Principal Investigators) and their research teams to pursue ground-breaking and ambitious research.
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.
Applications can be made in any field of research. The ERC’s grants operate on a ‘bottom-up’ basis without predetermined priorities.
Profile of the ERC Advanced Grant Principal Investigator
Applicants for the ERC Advanced Grants are expected to be active researchers with a track record of significant research achievements. The Principal Investigators should be exceptional leaders in terms of originality and significance of their research contributions. No specific eligibility criteria concerning the academic requirements are foreseen.
ERC grants support projects by an individual researcher who can employ researchers of any nationality as team members. Having one or more team members located in a non-European country is also possible.
Size of ERC Advanced Grants
Advanced Grants may be awarded up to 2.5 M€ for 5 years (pro rata for projects of shorter duration). However, an additional 1 M€ can be made available to cover eligible “start-up” costs for researchers moving from a third country to the EU or an associated country and/or the purchase of major equipment and/or access to large facilities and/or other major experimental and fieldwork costs.
An ERC grant can cover up to 100% of the total eligible direct costs of the research plus a contribution of 25% of the total eligible costs towards indirect costs.
Novelties
Now, Horizon Europe’s fundamental research programme is introducing lump sum funding to Advanced Grants. This will see researchers getting paid a set amount of money for the research they will do without having to report on each item of spending or filling out time sheets. This is different from the traditional way of distributing EU funding which ERC exclusively employed until this year, under which researchers get reimbursed for the costs that they report.
The ERC has also revamped the application form to put a stronger focus on the research idea rather than who the principal investigator is. Also, in line with CoARA’s recommendations, the ERC’s new rules shifted away from the traditional listing of research posts held and papers published, to a four-page narrative curriculum vitae. The ERC has also changed how it evaluates researchers, placing more emphasis on the project proposal rather than the applicant: At the evaluation stage, the applicant won’t be assigned a score anymore, only the project itself. In the past, both the CV and the project proposal were graded on a scale of one to five in the first step of the evaluation – with the project graded first, before evaluating the applicant.
Supporting information
More information and applications can be found in the EU Funding & Tender Portal (topic: ERC-2024-ADG). If you want to apply you should consult the results of the last call here and the information and statistics of all ERC funded projects here. You should also check the ERC Classes video playlist.
If you are considering to apply, please get in touch with us (cesam-gesciencia@ua.pt).