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UK European Research Council National Contact Point Helpdesk

The UK National Contact Point (NCP) Helpdesk for the European Research Council (ERC) assists applicants and grant holders from the UK, or those intending to move to the UK, by providing advice on the ERC and its grant schemes.

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What is the ERC?

The ERC is part of the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. The ERC, which is also known as the FP7 "Ideas" Programme, is the first pan-European funding agency for investigator-driven frontier research and has funding of €7.51 billion (2007-2013). The ERC aims to stimulate research excellence by supporting and encouraging the very best, truly creative scientists, scholars and engineers to be adventurous and take risks in their research. In their ERC grants, researchers are encouraged to go beyond established frontiers of knowledge and the boundaries of disciplines.

• Further Information on the ERC Structure and Policy
• ERC poster (.pdf)  

What type of grants does the ERC fund?

The ERC currently has two main funding schemes, Starting Grants and Advanced Grants. These both operate on a "bottom-up" basis across all research fields (apart from nuclear energy research), without predetermined priorities. They fund projects led by a Principal Investigator (PI) and (if they wish) their team.  Excellence is the sole criterion for funding, and the peer review criteria are the excellence of the PI and the excellence of the research project.

In 2011, the ERC also introduced two new pilot schemes:

• Synergy Grants which will enable small groups of two to four Principal Investigators (with a designated Lead Principal Investigator) and their teams to bring together complementary skills, knowledge, and resources, in order to jointly address research problems at the frontier of knowledge going beyond what the individual PIs could achieve alone; and
• Proof of Concept funding which allows researchers to bridge the gap between their research and the earliest stage of a marketable innovation. Please note that Proof of Concept funding is only for researchers who already hold an ERC grant (or recently finished an ERC grant).

The ERC also funds Co-ordination and Support Actions and Tenders which are for projects on the functioning of the ERC, so are not of interest to most researchers.

Objective: The objective is to provide critical and adequate support to the independent careers of excellent researchers, whatever their nationality, located in or moving to the EU Member States and FP7 Associated Countries*, who are at the stage of establishing or consolidating their own independent research team or programme.

• Further Information on Starting Grants

Objective: The objective is to encourage and support excellent, innovative investigator-initiated research projects by leading advanced investigators whatever their nationality, located in or moving to the EU Member States and FP7 Associated Countries*. This funding stream targets researchers who have already established themselves as being scientifically independent and world-class leaders in their own right. ERC Advanced Grants provide an opportunity to established scientists and scholars to pursue frontier research of their choice. Applicants for Advanced Grants are expected to be active researchers who have a track record of significant research achievements in the last 10 years.

• Further Information on Advanced Grants

*FP7 Associated Countries are currently: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Faroe Islands, FYR Macedonia, Iceland, Israel, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, and Turkey. More associated countries may join in the future.

Objective: The ERC Proof of Concept (PoC) provides additional funding for ERC grant holders to establish proof of concept, identify a development path and an Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) strategy for ideas arising from an ERC-funded project. The objective is to provide funds to enable ERC-funded ideas to be brought to a pre-demonstration stage where potential commercialisation opportunities have been identified.

Innovations can be commercialised through licences to a new or existing company or through a venture funded start-up, depending on the nature of the invention/idea, its potential markets and the inventor's plans for future involvement in the commercialisation. Innovations can also feed into ventures aimed at addressing social and environmental goals which may be in the voluntary and not-for-profit sectors.

The PoC aims at supporting an ERC grant holder during the pre-demonstration phase to prepare a "package" to be presented to venture capitalists, companies or social entrepreneurs that might invest in the technology and take it through the early commercialisation or roll-out phase

Further Information on the Proof of Concept Funding

Objective: Synergy Grants will enable small groups of two to four Principal Investigators (with a designated Lead Principal Investigator) and their teams to bring together complementary skills, knowledge, and resources, in order to jointly address research problems at the frontier of knowledge going beyond what the individual PIs could achieve alone.

• Further Information on Synergy Grants

Objective: ERC Co-ordination and Support Acttions (CSAs) and calls for tender are not normal ERC grants, but instead are projects for the monitoring, assessment and evaluation of ERC activities. These include projects, studies, expert groups, seminars, data access and dissemination, information and communication activities on the ERC. Please note that research, technological development or demonstration activities cannot be supported under these CSAs or calls for tender.

• Further Information on Co-ordination and Support Actions (CSAs) and Tenders