The European Research Council (ERC) supports individual researchers of any nationality and age wishing to pursue frontier research. It particularly welcomes proposals with cross disciplinary boundaries, pioneering ideas that address new and emerging fields, and applications that introduce unconventional, innovative approaches.
General ERC principles are:
• scientific excellence is the sole selection criterion
• applications can be made in any field of research.
The ERC funds the following type of grants:
• Starting grants to support young, early-career top researchers with 2-7 years of experience after their PhD;
• Consolidator grants to support already independent excellent researchers with 7-12 years of experience after their PhD;
• Advanced grants for senior research leaders with significant research achievements in the last 10 years;
• Proof of concept grants for ERC grant holders who want to check the market and/or innovation potential of research results from ERC-projects;
• Synergy grants for small groups of individual researchers.