Open to the world: 51 nationalities among winners of 2019 ERC Starting Grants
€621m for 408 early-career researchers across Europe
Four hundred and eight early-career researchers have been awarded European Research Council grants in this year’s first completed ERC competition. The highly-coveted funding will help individual scientists and scholars to build their own teams and conduct pioneering research across all disciplines. The grants, worth in total €621m are part of the EU’ Research and Innovation programme, Horizon 2020.
Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, said: “Researchers need freedom and support to follow their scientific curiosity if we are to find answers to the most difficult challenges of our age and our future. This is the strength of the grants that the EU provides through the European Research Council: an opportunity for outstanding scientists to pursue their most daring ideas.”
President of the European Research Council, Professor Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, commented: “In this year’s ERC Starting Grant competition, early-career researchers of 51 nationalities are among the winners − a record! It reminds us that science knows no borders and that talent is to be found everywhere. It is essential that, for its future successful development, the European Union keeps attracting and supporting outstanding researchers from around the world. At the ERC we are proud to contribute to this goal by supporting some of the most daring creative scientific talent.”
The successful candidates’ research covers a diverse range of topics, including studying how forest foods could provide a solution to world hunger; assessing the intensity, frequency and distribution of extreme sea levels in Europe; investigating how tech companies sell their products and seek consumers’ trust or unravelling the survival skills of single cell organisms.
The results of this grant competition show a greater diversity of nationalities than ever before: researchers are from 51 different countries across the world, from as far afield as Taiwan and Cuba. Some 20 researchers will move to Europe from outside the EU and associated countries to conduct new research.
The ERC-funded research will be carried out in 24 countries, with institutions from Germany (73), the UK (64) and the Netherlands (53) to host the highest number of projects. Some 13% of applications were selected for funding this time.
These starting grants will help the selected scientists build their own research teams, creating an estimated 2,500 jobs for postdoctoral fellows, PhD students and other staff at the host institutions.