EMPA Bremen - FP7

Ideas – in a nutshell

Budget € 7.5 bio.

Led by the European Research Council, sole criterium “excellence”
ERC objective: to create a European Champions League

Two proposal schemes, only,

the Starting Independent Researcher Grant (StG)
• One person can propose a five year project
• Bottom-up: Researcher can decide where to move frontier of knowledge forward
• Age until (new!) 8 y. after PhD degree
• (New!) 1- and 2-step proposal, to be submitted together
• funding for approx. 3 positions or € 100,000 – 400,000 per year, max. 2 Mio.
• calls planned regularly, once per year (submission in autumn)

since 2008 Advances Investigator Researcher Grant (AdG)

• One person can propose a five year project
• Bottom-up: Researcher can decide where to move frontier of knowledge forward
• for single independent & excellent principal investigators (10 year track record)
• with outstanding project ideas (novel, creative, inter-, multidisiplinary)
• funding for approx. 3 positions or € 100,000 – 500,000 per year, max 2.5 Mio.
• calls planned regularly, once per year (submission in spring)

for both

• 100% funding, first year € 300 mio., last year 1.7 bio.
• host has to provide infrastructure and has to be in Europe
• new overheads ( see below, 7 – 20 %)

Consequence: no more Marie Curie excellence (team) grants
The evaluation is still under development, 10 panels a 15 persons planned, selection top-down via national research organisations, 40 % biology-medicine and chemistry-physics each; 20% humanities