Four Russian researchers received 2020 ERC Starting Grants
The European Research Council (ERC) announced the results of its 2020 Starting Grants competition. The funding, worth in total €677 million, will be granted to 436 laureates to to build their own teams and conduct pioneering research across all scientific disciplines: from vaccine research to climate change adaptation and from nanoplastics to exploring the nature of dark matter in the Universe. The grants are part of the EU’s Research and Innovation programme, Horizon 2020.
The ERC grantees are a diverse group comprising 40 different nationalities that will be based in 25 countries across Europe. Out of 436 laureates, four are Russian nationals, which puts Russia third after the U.S. and China in the number of 2020 grantees coming from non-EU countries or countries associated to Horizon 2020.
The four new Russian ERC laureates will engage into projects in various research fields, such as nanoscale 3D printing of a lithium ion battery, genome evolution, astronomy, and social sciences.
Background
Set up in 2007 as the European Union research funding agency for excellence-based frontier research, the ERC aims to stimulate scientific excellence in Europe by encouraging competition for funding between the very best, creative researchers of any nationality and age from anywhere in the world. The ERC has an 'investigator-driven’, 'bottom-up' approach, which allows researchers to identify new opportunities in any field of research. On the sole basis of excellence, the ERC provides attractive long-term funding to individual top scientists and their teams to pursue ground-breaking research. The funded projects are expected to lead to scientific advances and to set clear and inspirational targets for frontier research across the world.
ERC Starting grants support individual excellent researchers who are starting their own independent research team or programme. The grants are up to €1.5 million for 5 years with possible additional funding up to €1 million.
Russia ranks fourth among non-EU/Associated countries, behind the USA, Canada and India with a total of 61 ERC grants awarded to Russian nationals since the launch of Horizon 2020 in 2014.