The Return of the ERC Synergy Grants
There is good news for the research community: The European Research Council (ERC) has re-launched the Synergy Grant scheme. ERC Synergy Grants enable a minimum of 2 to a maximum of 4 principal investigators (PIs) and their teams to bring together complementary skills and knowledge in new ways, in order to jointly address ambitious research questions.
This funding scheme was introduced in 2012 and 2013 as a pilot. The research community was enthusiastic, the success rate, however, was very low: only 1.5% in 2012 and 3% in 2013. In the following years, the ERC Scientific Council made a thorough assessment of the pilot scheme and the outcome was clearly in favour of a re-launch.
The 2018 Synergy Grant call is now open, with a deadline of 14 November 2017. The objective of this highly competitive scheme is to promote substantial advances at the frontiers of knowledge, to cross-fertilise scientific fields, and to encourage new productive lines of enquiry and new methods and techniques, including unconventional approaches and investigations. The call has a budget of €250 million and 25-30 grants are expected to be awarded. The maximum budget per project is €10 million, with the possibility of an additional €4 million in exceptional cases. There are no restrictions (nor a higher or lower success rate) regarding the location of the 2-4 PIs within Europe, including Associated Countries – they can be located in different countries or even in the same building.
Interested in learning more? Euresearch is organising a National Information Event on the Synergy Grant on 22 August 2017 in Bern.
Katja Wirth, National Contact Point ERC and Member of the Euresearch Management Board
