On 10 July 2012, the European Research Council (ERC) has published the last calls for proposals of the ERC schemes "Starting Grants" and “Advanced Grants“ of the current Research Framework Programme.

The ERC promotes frontier research in all fields of science with a bottom-up approach. The ERC budget for the final year of FP7 amounts to over 1.7 billion Euros, the highest ever since its establishment five years ago.

The "Starting Grants" are designed for excellent young scientists of all nationalities with 2-7 years (in exceptional cases up to 11 ½ years) of experience following their PhD. The call for "Advanced Grants" addresses excellent, established researchers, with a research experience of more than 10 years.

All schemes are open to researchers of any nationality and any current place of work. However, ERC projects must be carried out at an institution in Europe.

The grants are awarded for a period of up to five years with a funding amount of up to 2 million Euros for "Starting Grants" and up to € 3.5 million for "Advanced Grants".

The deadlines for applications are: 

• 17 October 2012 for "Starting Grants"
• 22 November 2012 for "Advanced Grants"

Further calls for the funding schemes "Consolidator Grants" (7-12 years after PhD) and "Synergy Grants" (groups of 2-4 PI’s) were announced in the recently published ERC Work Programme 2013.

Providing advice to applicants
The German National Contact Point ERC, a collaboration between the EU-Bureau of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (EU-Büro des BMBF) and the German Research Foundation (DFG), offers its free-of-charge services to any researcher with a (future) host institution in Germany.

Besides rendering individual advice to applicants, the NCP ERC also offers workshops and information sessions on ERC in Germany.

Organisations and potential grantees may find information and the NCP ERC event calendar on www.erc-germany.de (in English) or www.nks-erc.de (in German). The NCP team will be happy to answer any questions concerning the application.