ERC concludes first stage of evaluation process
A total of 559 candidates have been selected to go forward to the next stage of the evaluation process of the European Research Council's Starting Grants, targeting young researchers. The candidates were chosen from among 9,167 proposals. They will now be required to submit a full description of their project proposal by 17 September. The conclusion of the selection process, which will involve individual interviews with candidates, is foreseen for the end of the year. With a budget of €290 million for the first round of grants, it is estimated that a little less than half of 559 candidates will be awarded support. 'The first stage of the peer review evaluation process went very well in spite of the overwhelming response to the first call,' said Professor Fotis Kafatos, President of the ERC. He added that 'considering that merely 559 of the impressive number of proposals have been invited to the second stage, it is inevitable that many good candidates will be disappointed not to go through.' Those applicants however will receive feedback from the individual evaluators about their proposals and the panel conclusions. A breakdown of data of the retained applicants makes for interesting reading. The portrait which emerges of the typical applicant is that of a male researcher (a total of 76% of those retained are male, although it varies depending on the research domain), 36 years of age, with about four to nine years of experience after the completion of his PhD. A total of 45% of the 559 proposals are in physics, mathematics ad engineering, compared to 37% in life sciences and 18% in social sciences and humanities. This mirrors the weight given to the fields in the original call for proposals. As might be expected, the majority of applicants (85%) are EU nationals, while 7% of those retained come from 'Third Countries'. The goal of the ERC to attract back European researchers also seems to have paid off. A total of 4% of the retained applicants are currently based outside the EU and its associated countries. The majority of these are Europeans willing to move back to Europe. The statistics also provide insight into the countries in which the researchers intend conducting their research. Some 49% of applicants have chosen to work in a host institution in one of the six founding members of the European Economic Community (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands). The next biggest geographic bloc in the table comprises the other nine EU Member States that joined in the years before 2004. Some 36% of applicants intend to work in one of these countries. Finally, the 12 countries that have acceded to the EU since 2004 account for 4% of the host institutions, while 11% of the host institutions are based in one of the nine countries associated to the EU.