The European Research Council’s (ERC) mission is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields, on the basis of scientific excellence.
The ERC complements other funding activities in Europe such as those of the national research funding agencies and is a flagship component of Horizon Europe, the European Union’s Research Framework Programme for 2021 to 2027.
Being ‘investigator-driven, or ‘bottom-up’, in nature, the ERC approach allows researchers to identify new opportunities and directions in any field of research. ERC grants are awarded through open competition to projects headed by starting and established researchers, irrespective of their origins, who are working or moving to work in Europe.
