The ERC Starting Grant supports young scientists in a wide range of fields, while it aims to help them in launching their careers. Each Starting Grant provides a funding of 1.5 million EUR over a period of 5 years, as well as covers certain specific costs above this amount.
The 494 recipients were selected from 3474 applicants, which means that the rate of success was above 14%. The highest amount of submitted (1443), as well as successful (209) applications were in the category of physical sciences and engineering (which includes synthetic chemistry). This was followed by social sciences and Humanities with 1039 submitted proposals – out of which however, only 139 was selected, which is less than the selected proposals in the 3rd category, life sciences, where 146 proposals were selected out of the 992 submissions.
With regards to gender balance, 44% of the awardees were female. This is a slight improvement compared to last year’s 43%. The geographical distribution however, is less even. Germany can boast both the most applicants and the most host institutions receiving the grant. The second most grants were awarded to Italians, however, with regards to host institutions, the Netherlands is the second most popular. French applicants are in the third most common recipients, while the third most popular host country is the United Kingdom – although only narrowly compared to France, as the former has 50 host institutions, while the latter has 49. It is clear that applicants from widening countries and eastern-European member states are still significantly behind in receiving these grants, as well as in having host institutions where recipients work at.
More detailed statistics on the awarded Starting Grants are available here, while the full list of recipients can be accessed here.
