The European Research Council (ERC) has selected 478 early-career researchers from across Europe to receive this year’s starting grants worth a total of €761 million under the EU’s Horizon Europe programme. The grants will support excellent research in a range of fields, including physics and engineering, life sciences, and social sciences and humanities. Each researcher will receive up to €1.5 million over a maximum of five years to launch their own projects, form research teams and work on promising ideas.
One of the winners is from Croatia, Šestan Marko from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Rijeka, for the research: MemoSniff Every smell you take – Smell[1]induced conditioning of the immune system during infections LS6. The full list of winners can be found here.
Ekaterina Zaharieva, Commissioner for Start-ups, Research and Innovation, said: “The winners of this year’s starting grants include researchers of 51 nationalities. Their work will advance knowledge in a range of fields, including cancer research, mental health and quantum science. Thanks to these new grants, top scientists are coming to Europe, and many have chosen to stay here because of this support. This shows that Europe has the potential to attract and retain top scientific talent.
It is estimated that this round of grants under the EU’s Horizon Europe programme will create around 3,000 jobs in the teams of the new grantees. Successful candidates will carry out their projects at universities and research centres in 25 countries, including Germany (99 grantees), the Netherlands (44) and France (41). Candidates come from Europe and beyond – 51 nationalities are represented among the grantees, with the largest numbers being Germans (87 researchers), Italians (55), French (33) and researchers from the UK and Spain (32 each). 3928 proposals were submitted for this highly competitive call, and 12% of the proposals were selected for funding.
Source: European Commission Representation in Croatia