After the competition for ERC Advanced Grants 2017 closed for applications on 31 August 2017, the ERC has now released the preliminary statistics on submitted proposals:

• The number of applicants decreased to 2,166, compared to 2,404 in 2016 competition. The number of applicants is still however higher than in the 2015 competition (1,953).
• The highest number of applications was submitted in the domain of Physical Sciences and Engineering (994 or 46%), followed by Life Sciences (630 or 29%), and Social Science and Humanities (542 or 25%).
• 18% of proposals were submitted by women – a slight improvement from the past years (16.5% in 2016, 17% in 2015

The ERC Work Programme has earmarked €567 million for an estimated 245 Advanced Grants in 2017. The estimated success rate in this competition is 11%. The ERC is now starting evaluation of the proposals. The selected projects will be announced in spring 2018.

ERC Advanced Grants are designed to support excellent scientists in any field at the career stage at which they are already established research leaders with a recognised track record of research achievements in the last ten years.