ERC scouts for researchers; offers grants up to 3.5 mn euros

Have an exciting and a revolutionary research idea? European Research Council is ready to fund it to the tune of 3.5 million Euros over a five-year period.
All you have to do is write a research proposal and send it to the European Research Council (ERC) for vetting by their panel of experts.
The topic of research can cover a wide range from knotty problems of mathematics to rock paintings of Ajanta and Ellora, Ramesh Pillai, a ERC grant holder told reporters here.
To pursue the research, a grant-holder must have a host institute in any of the European Union and its associate countries, where they will have to spend half of their research time -- two-and-a-half years.

But it is not as easy at it sounds as the only 12 per cent of the total proposals received by the ERC have got the research grants.
"Nobel Prize winners also apply for grants. Some succeed, some fail as they write very poor proposals," Donald Dingwell, ERC Secretary General said here.

Dingwell and Pillai toured Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Mumbai and Delhi over the last five days looking for top researchers from India willing to work in institutions.
Since the ERC's launch in 2007, it has awarded 5.7 billion euros in research grants to over 3400 scientists, both early career and senior, Dingwell said.

Noting that 13 researchers of Indian origin working within and outside India have till now availed of the grant, he hoped that more Indian researchers would join in.
Dingwell said a significant feature of the programme was that it adopted an investigator-driven and bottom-up approach, which allowed researchers to identify new opportunities in any field of science.
The programme consisted of three components -- 'starting grants' aimed at early-career emerging researchers, 'consolidator grants' aimed at already independent excellent researchers and 'advanced grants' aimed at supporting top senior researchers.
The ERC, a component of the EU's Seventh Research Framework Programme, has a total budget of 7.5 billion euros from 2007 to 2013.

The European Commission last year proposed to almost double the ERC budget for 2014 to 2020 under the new Framework Programme 'Horizon 2020'.