European Research Council

ERC grants are awarded through open competition to projects headed by starting and established researchers, irrespective of their origins, who are working or moving to work in Europe. The sole criterion for selection is scientific excellence. The aim here is to recognise the best ideas, and confer status and visibility on the best brains in Europe, while also attracting talent from abroad. However, the ERC aims to do more than simply fund research. In the long term, it looks to substantially strengthen and shape the European research system. This is done through high quality peer review, the establishment of international benchmarks of success, and the provision of up-to-date information on who is succeeding and why. The hope is that these processes will help universities and other research institutions gauge their performance and encourage them to develop better strategies to establish themselves as more effective global players. By challenging Europe's brightest minds, the ERC expects that its grants will help to bring about new and unpredictable scientific and technological discoveries - the kind that can form the basis of new industries, markets, and broader social innovations of the future. Ultimately, the ERC aims to make the European research base more prepared to respond to the needs of a knowledge-based society and provide Europe with the capabilities in frontier research necessary to meet global challenges. The ERC aims to:

• Support the best of the best in Europe across all fields of science, scholarship and engineering
• Promote wholly investigator-driven, or 'bottom-up' frontier research
• Encourage the work of the established and next generation of independent top research leaders in Europe
• Reward innovative proposals by placing emphasis on the quality of the idea rather than the research area
• Raise the status and visibility of European frontier research and the very best researchers of today and tomorrow