Irish Research Council welcomes launch of the largest annual budget to-date for the European Research Council
Posted: 5 July, 2019
The Irish Research Council today welcomed the launch of the European Research Council (ERC) Work Programme 2020, published on Tuesday 2 July 2019.
The ERC will provide €2.2 billion in 2020 in support of 1,100 researchers to conduct ground-breaking research. The 2020 budget is the Council’s biggest ever annual injection of funding in frontier research.
Since the ERC was established, over 9,000 researchers at all career stages have been funded across universities and research institutions in Europe, including in Ireland. The funding will also support Europe’s future generation of excellent researchers through the estimated 8,000 postdoctoral researchers, PhD students and other research staff employed on ERC-funded projects.
The European Research Council is part of the Excellent Science pillar of Horizon2020, the European Union’s framework programme for research and development.
The newly announced work programme includes details of Starting, Consolidator and Advanced Grant competitions, along with ‘Proof of Concept’ and ‘Synergy’ (collaborative) Grant competitions. The Starting Grant 2020 competition is now open and will close on 16 October 2019.
Commenting today, Chair of the Irish Research Council, Professor Jane Ohlmeyer, said: “The Irish Research Council is proud to have supported the development of 65% of Ireland’s ERC awardees, across all disciplines, in Horizon2020 to-date.
“Central to the Council’s mission is fostering the development of world-class researchers within Ireland to future proof our society and economy, and our higher education and research system. The establishment of the Laureate awards for open frontier research, which has invested €30 million to-date in 48 projects across all disciplines, is key to this future-proofing process. We look forward to current Laureate-holders being among Ireland’s future cohort of ERC awardees.”
