The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded €580 million in ‘Starting Grants’ to 427 researchers at the beginning of their research careers. Each award is worth up to €2 million and the total represents an increase of 40% since last year’s funding round.

This is the third round of ‘Starting Grant’ awards from the ERC – a pan-European funding body set up by the EU in 2007 to provide money for blue skies research.

Although the ERC suffered from accusations of overblown bureaucracy (see Brussels concedes to European Research Council reform) in its first few years, around 1,200 researchers across Europe are currently funded by ERC grants.

Researchers of any nationality can compete for the funding as long as the work is based in European host institutions and successful applicants are chosen by peer review. This year, 2,873 researchers applied, an increase of 14% since last year, and about 15% were successful. The average age of successful candidates was 36 and 73.5% of awards were won by men. The ERC points out that this is an improvement on the previous year, when men won 77% of the awards.

The bulk of the money went to the traditional centres of research within Europe. The United Kingdom was awarded 79 grants, the most of any nation, closely followed by France with 71 and Germany with 67. This pattern has remained the same since the first round of funding in 2008, which saw the same three countries in the top three spots. A breakdown of awards by country can be seen in the graph above.

Physical sciences and engineering attracted 45.7% of the funding, life sciences 35.8%, and 18.5% went to social sciences and humanities.

“I believe that the Commission’s initiative to launch the ERC in 2007 has been fully vindicated," said Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn in a press release. "I hope that in the fullness of time we will see more Nobel prizes awarded to ERC funded top talent, following ERC Starting Grant holder Konstantin Novoselov’s recent Nobel.”