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ERC Starting Grants
Starting Grants of the European Research Council (ERC)
The objective of the Starting Grant is to provide support to the independent careers of promising researchers, whatever their nationality, who are at the stage of starting or consolidating their own independent research team or, depending on the field, their independent research programme.
The ERC actions are open to researchers of any age and nationality who would like to set up their research activity in the EU or any Associated or Candidate Country. He/she must have been awarded his/her first PhD (or equivalent doctoral degree) more than 2 and less than 12 years prior to date of publication of the call for proposals. Extensions of this period may be allowed only in case of eligible career breaks such as maternity and paternity leaves, leave taken for long-term illness, national service or unavoidable statutory reasons (e.g. clinical qualifications). Including these extensions, the time period following the first PhD-award must not surpass 16.5 years.
The composition of the individual research team is flexible, i.e. research teams can be of national or trans-national character. Team members can be of any age and nationality with their hosting institutions located in any country.
Starting Grants cover 100% of Personnel Costs, Equipment Costs, Consumables as well as Travel and Subsistence Costs which directly support the implementation of the project. An overhead of 20% will also be provided as contribution towards indirect costs. The budget maximum for an ERC Starting Grant is 1.5 Euro mio. for a duration of 5 years. Projects with major equipment needs can apply for a maximum of 2 Euro mio.
Applications have to be submitted by a single Principal Investigator in liaison with his/her hosting institution. The ERC applies a one-stage-application procedure to the Starting Grants, i.e. a full proposal of 25 pages has to be submitted to the relevant deadline. The evaluation of proposals follows a two-step-procedure with an interview in Brussels during the second step.
Reapplications are not eligible during the calendar year following the submission of an unsuccessful application, unless that application was judged to meet the quality threshold for funding.
Calls for Proposals for the Starting Grants are published annually.
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