Up to 3.5m Euros funding for "Frontier Research"

ERC Advanced Investigators Grant 2009 (ERC-2009-AdG_20090415 for Social Sciences and Humanities)

The objective of the Advanced Grant is to encourage and support excellent, innovative investigator-initiated research projects by leading advanced investigators across the EU Member States and Associated Countries.

European Research Council (ERC) grants support projects which are carried out by individual research teams headed by a single Principal Investigator (PI) of any nationality and, if necessary, include additional team members. These teams may be of national or trans-national character.

The PI is expected to devote at least 30% of his/her workload to the ERC funded project, while spending at least 50% of his/her total workload in Europe (EU Member
State or Associated Country).

ERC grants aim to support "Frontier Research", in other words the pursuit of questions at or beyond the frontiers of knowledge, without regard for established disciplinary boundaries. Applications can be made in any field of research - including the social sciences and humanities - with particular emphasis on the frontier of science, scholarship and engineering. In particular, proposals of an interdisciplinary nature which cross the boundaries between different fields of research, pioneering proposals addressing new and emerging fields of research or proposals introducing unconventional, innovative approaches and scientific inventions are encouraged, as long as the expected impact on science, scholarship or engineering is significant.

Depending on the specific project and field, the level of these grants may be up to EUR 3.500.000 for a period of 5 years (pro rata for projects of shorter duration). Normally, however, grants will be limited to a maximum of EUR 2.500.000 unless the application involves specific features requiring a higher level of support: a 'Co-Investigator project'; requirement to purchase major research equipment, or a PI who is coming from a third country to establish a research team and activity at a host institution in a EU Member State or Associated Country.

An ERC grant can cover up to 100% of the total eligible direct costs of the research plus a contribution towards indirect costs, which cannot exceed 20% of the total eligible direct costs.

This information has been extracted from the "ERC Grant Schemes Guide for Applicants December 2008".

Deadline: 15 April 2009 at 17:00:00 (Brussels local time)

Full details of the ERC-2009-AdG_20090415 call are available on the Cordis website at:
http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/dc/index.cfm?fuseaction=UserSite.IdeasDetailsCallPage&call_id=187

The competition for this funding will be fierce and the assessment is strongly weighted to the quality of the PI alone. In order for an application to stand the best chance of success, we recommend a long lead time for the application preparation, and internal peer review to strengthen the presentation of the proposal.