No, Co-investigators (Co PI) are not eligible for an ERC Proof of Concept grant.
Only Principal Investigators (PI) in Research main grants (ERC Starting, Consolidator or Advanced grants), as well as PI and corresponding PI of Synergy grants are eligible to submit a proposal to the ERC Proof of Concept Call.
More information on the eligibility criteria for the Principal Investigator can be found in the ERC_Work_Programme_2017, section relevant to the call.
When applying for an ERC PoC grant, Financial viability check is applicable to the coordinators.Sole applicants are not considered as ‘coordinators’. They will only be subject to a financial viability check if there are justified grounds to doubt their financial viability.
There are, on the basis of available information, grounds to doubt the financial capacity of the entity, if the entity e.g.:
− has weak financial viability results from other projects or another sources
− has been involved in cases of serious administrative errors or fraud
− is subject to pending legal procedures or judicial proceedings for serious administrative errors or fraud
− is subject to an attachment order
− is subject to a recovery order for an outstanding amount issued by the Commission/Agency on which the payment is significantly overdue;
− has been subject to substantial findings in an audit by the Commission/Agency, Court of Auditors or an OLAF investigation within the last 2 years that put in doubt its financial capacity).
Further information on the financial viability check is available in the H2020 Online Manual.
Yes, submitting an application with a spin-off company as Host Institution is feasible, as long as it complies with the eligibility criteria defined in the ERC Work Programme 2017.
The Host Insitution (HI) of the ERC Proof of Concept proposal does not have to be the same as the Host Institution of the main frontier research grant.
In the ERC Proof of Concept grants, given the shorter length, the project report is required only once, at the end of the project, and will combine the technical and financial aspects in one single document.Article 20 of the H2020 ERC Proof of Concept Grant Agreement defines the reporting requirements.
The ERC POC report must be prepared and submitted online via the Portal.
ERC Proof of Concept 2017 proposals are evaluated on a 'Pass/Fail' basis on each of the evaluation criteria. The applicant receives an evaluation report on the outcome. This indicates whether the proposal is retained for funding and provides the passed/failed status for each of the evaluation criteria, with corresponding comments given by the panel.
More information on the evaluation procedure can be found in the ERC Work Programme 2017, section relevant to the call.
For the Proof of Concept 2017 Call, although it is not mandatory to provide the names of individual team members or their CVs, the Proof of Concept plan needs to include justification that the persons working on the tasks are well qualified for the purpose: the description of the team needs to be filled in Part B - section 3.
More information on the submission and evaluation procedures can be found in the ERC Work Programme 2017, section relevant to the call.
For the Proof of Concept 2017 Call, applicants submit the whole proposal that is evaluated in a single step by the peer reviewers.For more information on the evaluation process, please refer to the ERC Work Programme 2017.
Yes, an applicant could submit a proposal to the ERC Proof of Concept 2017 call and at the same time to one of the 3 main ERC frontier research calls (since the restrictions stated in the ERC Work Programme 2017 (http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/wp/2016_2017/erc/h2020-wp17-erc_en.pdf) do not apply to Proof of Concept grants).
There are no shares or quotas by domain or discipline for the ERC Proof of Concept 2017 call. No domain or field is excluded (*) and the possibility for innovation arising from the social sciences and humanities to apply for a Proof of Concept funding is fully recognised.
(*) As stated in the ERC Work Programme 2017, page 15: "Research proposals within the scope of Annex I to the Euratom Treaty, namely those directed towards nuclear energy applications, shall be submitted to relevant calls under the Euratom Framework Programme."
No, as stated in the ERC Work Programme 2017, a Principal Investigator may submit only one application per the ERC Proof of Concept 2017 call.Important note: More than one Proof of Concept Grant may be awarded per ERC funded frontier research project but only one Proof of Concept project may be running at any one time for the same ERC frontier research project.