ERC Training Day: "The right person at the right time"

The European Research Council (ERC) funds fundamental research in Europe with three funding schemes: the "ERC Starting Grant" (2 to 7 years after PhD), the ERC Consolidator Grant (7 to 12 years after PhD) and the ERC Advanced Grant (for experienced established scientists). These grants amount to up to 2.5 million euros for five years and are open to top researchers who wish to carry out their frontier research. The competition is fierce and only about ten percent of the proposals are successful. Thus, to support the scientists to meet the high standards, the Excellence Cluster Universe organized an ERC Training Day. Information were given from both perspectives – from the ERC grant awardee’s and the ERC panel member’s perspective – and the participants had the chance to read, discuss and assess a number of submitted ERC grant proposals.

First, Liane Lewerentz from the Nationale Kontaktstelle of the BMBF in Bonn informed about the funding schemes, open calls and formalities. Then, Michaela Werther, within the TUM ForTe team responsible for EU collaborative projects, called attention to the support available for scientists at the TUM. The LMU counterpart Dr. Brigitte Weiss-Brummer from the Office for International Funding was present as well as Julia Epp and Kathrin Zahr from the MPG's EU office.

From the perspective of an ERC Advanced Grant awardee, Prof. Andrzej Buras (TUM) provided helpful practical advice for successful proposals. Since an ERC grant is much more difficult to obtain then a DFG funding, as he stressed, his main advice was not to be too modest with the scientific merits and to foresee at least two months time for writing the proposal.

Then, as longstanding ERC panel member, Prof. Dr. Gerhard Rempe from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics explained how the selection committee works. He made clear that the only criterion of the panel is excellence, excellence of the person as well as the project. "You have to show that you are the right person, at the right time, at the right place”, he said. “Write your proposal with heart and soul”, he strongly recommended.

In the afternoon, the 30 participants were given five - successful and unsuccessful - submitted ERC grant proposals. The proposals were investigated for weaknesses and strengths, discussed and finally a ranking was created. It showed that the participants of the ERC training day would have funded the same projects as the ERC grant panel had done.

Further information:

erc.europa.eu/funding-and-grants

www.eubuero.de/erc.htm

http://www.forte.tum.de/forschungsfoerderung/internationale-forschungsfoerderung-eu-buero/

http://www.uni-muenchen.de/forschung/service/forschungsfoerderung/kontakt/index.html