European Research Council announces €1.7B budget for 2016

The European Research Council (ERC) released its 2016 work programme on Tuesday, setting out the ground rules on €1.67 billion of grants, for which researchers from anywhere in the world who are ready to come or to stay in Europe are eligible to apply.

Within the new series of competitions, the ERC opened the first one on Wednesday. The call for starting grants, with a budget of €485 million and deadline of 17 November, is open to researchers with two to seven years of experience since completing a PhD.

In October, the biggest chunk of the budget will go to consolidator grant calls for mid-career scientists, who have seven to twelve years of experience since completing a PhD. There will also be proof of concept awards for would-be entrepreneurs to advance their ERC-funded research towards commercialisation.

In May next year advanced grants will be dished out to research leaders with proven track records in their fields.  

Competition budgets and deadlines

	call opens	deadline	budget	decision announced
starting grant	29 Jul 2015	17 Nov 2015	€485M	29 Apr 2016 / 01 Sept 2016
consolidator grant	15 Oct 2015	02 Feb 2016	€605M	01 Jul 2016 / 01 Sept 2016
advanced grant	24 May 2016	01 Sept 2016	€540M	16 Jan 2017 / 16 Mar 2017
proof of concept	22 Oct 2015	16 Feb 2016 / 26 May 2016 / 04 Oct 2016	€20M	16 May / 13 Oct / 17 Jan 2017

Source: ERC work programme 2016

The ERC was formed in 2007 as the first, pan-European research agency with a classic peer-review system for awarding grants for basic research.

From the start its competitions have been extremely popular with researchers. The institute has awarded over 5,000 grants, worth €9 billion, to scientists of 66 nationalities.

Western European countries are the big winners in the ERC, with Central and Eastern states struggling to compete due to less well-established scientific infrastructures.

In total 395, or 8 per cent, of ERC grant-holders are non-European nationals. Of these 171 are from the US, 41 from Canada, 33 from Russia, 29 Australia, 25 India, and 18 Japan.