Finland enjoying increasing success in the competition for ERC funding

Finland’s success rates in the European Research Council’s (ERC) funding calls have improved steadily throughout the Horizon 2020 programme. In the 2017 round, Finland racked up a record-breaking 23 ERC grants.

The ERC funds researcher-driven, excellent frontier research. The projects to be funded are selected solely based on their scientific quality. The review of applications also focuses on the novelty and boldness of the research idea with a view to paving the way for completely new avenues of research.

The ERC today announced the winners of its 2017 round of Advanced Grants. ERC Advanced Grants were awarded to four leading scientists affiliated with Finnish universities: Peter Liljeroth (Aalto University; Liljeroth won an ERC Starting Grant in 2011), Orlando Rojas (Aalto University), Jan Von Plato (University of Helsinki) and Judith Pallot (University of Helsinki).

In all, Finland secured 9.5 million euros in ERC Advanced Grant funding. In the 2017 round, researchers working in Finland won a total of some 44 million euros through the ERC’s various funding schemes. In addition, Finnish-based ERC grantees won five Proof of Concept Grants to explore the commercial or societal potential of their work.

In the ERC’s press release, the President of the ERC, Professor Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, said: “The diversity and boldness of the research in this latest funding round is again impressive. The selected researchers explore the brink of the unknown, the ideal setting to make breakthroughs. If the past is any guide to the future, the ERC is set to continue betting on audacious scientific projects – the latest review shows again that over 70 per cent of ERC-funded research led to discoveries and major scientific advances.”