Synergy Grants in 2018!
© 2017 EPFL
The ERC Scientific Council decided to take the preliminary steps to reinstate the ERC Synergy Grant (SyG) funding scheme in 2018. It is expected that the call will be published on 19 July 2017, with a deadline of 14 November 2017. The deadline might change depending on the actual date of adoption of the Work Programme, so stay alert!
Synergy Grants’ ambition to bring together top researchers with complementary skills and knowledge to enable them to jointly address a commonly chosen challenging research problem in unconventional ways, potentially leading to major breakthroughs that scientists would not be able to achieve working alone.
The demand for Synergy Grants in the previous two competitions (2012 and 2013) exceeded by far the resources allocated to the scheme (€150 million per year). In 2012 and 2013, the ERC received 697 and 427 proposals respectively. In total 24 projects involving 83 principal investigators have been funded for five to six years. The projects covered different research disciplines: 11 in physical science and engineering, 9 in life sciences, and 4 in social science and humanities. Past experience shows that the ERC Synergy Grant is looking to fund large-scale projects, which stem from a ground-breaking synergistic work of 2 and up to 4 Principle Investigators (PIs). Each project may be funded with up to 15 million euros, for a duration of up to 6 years each. According to the latest information we have, the 2018 call is expecting to fund 25 to 30 projects, with grants of maximum 10 M€ for up to 6 years.
Above all, the project should meet the sole criterion of the ERC, which is “Excellence”. As in the personal ERC grants it should be hypothesis- and investigator-driven, carry the high-risk and high-gain, and constitute non-incremental work for all PIs (individually and together). The size and nature of the ERC Synergy is highly important. All the PIs involved should be “ERC Material” and meet the demanding requirements of the ERC. The group of PIs applying for ERC Synergy Grant can be a combination of career levels: Starting (StG), Consolidator (CoG) and/or Advanced (AdG).
As soon as the deadlines are published, don’t hesitate to contact the Research Office for assistance.
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