ERC starting grants

03 November 2009

By Lindsay McDermott

Recently I went to the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants Information and Proposal Writing seminar in Mill Lane, Cambridge. The ERC is an exciting new pan-European funding organisation offering support to new and established investigators through starting and advanced grant schemes. There are 7.5 billion Euros of funding up for grabs between 2007 and 2013, half of which is allocated to the starting grant scheme – so if you are a new investigator the ERC is definitely worth investigating. For new investigators their criteria are strict. You must be between two and ten years post PhD award (which unfortunately rules me out), have published at least one paper without your PhD supervisor, as well as a number of high impact, main author, peer-reviewed publications in leading international journals. They’re also looking for people with good leadership potential - supervising final year undergraduate and MSc lab projects is ideal experience. At the seminar the ERC representative gave us tips on how to make your application stand out from the crowd. So don’t just say that in 2009 you presented a poster at a conference in Canada. Sell yourself and tell them you were the only UK participant, or the youngest, or perhaps your poster won a prize. As well as all this there’s a fifteen page proposal to submit in which you must outline your ground breaking research and spell out how much it’s all going to cost. You can submit your application to one of three research areas, or “domains” as the ERC call them: Physical Sciences and Engineering, Life Sciences or Social Sciences and Humanities. There are no restrictions on research subjects and the ERC offer grants up to two million Euros for a maximum of five years. Deadlines for each domain are on the ERC website here. Good luck!