ERC Synergy Grants to fund 66 teams tackling major scientific challenges
The ERC Synergy Grants foster collaboration between outstanding researchers, enabling them to combine their expertise, knowledge and resources to push the boundaries of scientific discovery. This funding is part of the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.
Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, said:
‘Twenty-eight of the 66 newly selected teams include a researcher based outside Europe, mainly in the United States, but also Canada, Australia, Brazil, Ghana, South Africa and Singapore. Europe’s frontier research has never been so international. This global collaboration strengthens European science, gives our researchers access to world-class expertise and infrastructure, and brings leading scientists from around the world closer to Europe.'
President of the European Research Council, Prof. Maria Leptin, said:
‘Collaboration is at the heart of the ERC Synergy Grants. In our latest round, teams of researchers will join forces to address the most complex scientific problems together - this time, they are more international than ever. The competition was fierce, with many outstanding proposals left unfunded. With more funds, the ERC could fully capitalise on this wealth of first-class science. Such scientific endeavours are what Europe needs to be at the real forefront.'
The projects selected for funding cover diverse topics across many disciplines. For example, four researchers will investigate how variations in the genetic code of microscopic organisms could inspire new treatments for inherited diseases, while another group will probe the first microseconds of the Universe. Other teams will model how insights from the physical and social sciences can be combined to better understand crowd dynamics, and examine how East African mountain communities adapt to environmental and societal change.
Read more about the selected projects
Facts & figures
In total, 712 proposals were submitted to this call. Only about one in ten proposals were selected for funding, with the successful projects receiving on average €10.3 million each. The selected projects will be carried out at universities and research centres in 26 countries across Europe and beyond. Twenty-eight projects will involve grantees based in Germany, 24 in the United Kingdom, and 21 in both France and the United States.
Six projects will include principal investigators in countries that have so far hosted relatively few ERC grants - the Czech Republic (3), Portugal (2), Cyprus (1), Estonia (1) and Hungary (1). More than 40% of the funded projects will involve one principal investigator based outside the EU and associated countries. Women represent around 25% of the researchers involved in the selected projects.
See the full list of winning research projects
Applicants based in Switzerland
The statistics and list of successful candidates are provisional. The European Commission and the Swiss Government have successfully concluded negotiations on the association of Switzerland to Horizon Europe and the signature of the agreement is expected to take place in 2025. If the association agreement has not yet come into force by the date of the signature of the grant agreement, applicants with Swiss host institutions may not be eligible to receive funding. In that case, if the signature of the association agreement is not imminent, the applicants will be given the possibility to transfer their proposal to an eligible host institution in an EU Member State or in an associated country.
About the ERC
The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialisation. The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. Since November 2021, Maria Leptin is the President of the ERC. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion, as part of the Horizon Europe programme, under the responsibility of European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, Ekaterina Zaharieva.
