The ERC Consolidator Grants provide funding for excellent researchers with 7 to 12 years of post-PhD experience. The grants are awarded for a five-year period and may be worth up to € 2 million.

There were 313 winners of the ERC’s latest round of Consolidator Grants, which had a  total funding of €632 million. The grants are part of the EU's research and innovation programme ‘Horizon Europe’ (2021-2027).

In this call, the winners represent 42 nationalities, with Germans (58 researchers), Italians (30) and French (26) leading the ranking in absolute numbers.  There are 27 researchers from outside the European Union and countries associated to the Horizon Europe programme, (not including researchers from UK and CH): they are from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Iran, Japan, New Zealand, Tanzania, US and Vietnam. The three Indian recipients are:

• Dr Leo Kurian (Institute of Neurophysiology at the University of Cologne, Germany): The Consolidator Grantee Kurian received funding for his proposed research programme TRANSCEND and it will be used to revalue the current scientific understanding of the regulation of mRNA translation central to embryonic cell fate decisions and cellular identity in the context of human cardiac development. In total, he will receive up to 1.98 million euros in research funding over a period of five years. Kurian’s laboratory studies fundamental principles by which information from the DNA is accurately and selectively translated in time and space to program the development of the human heart. Read More(link is external)
• Prof. Ajit Srivastava (Emory University in the United States). With the ERC Consolidator Grant he wants to exploit the interplay between strong interactions and the underlying geometry and topology of electronic states to hunt for elusive topological correlated phases such as fractional quantum Hall states of excitons. Srivastava will take up his work at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) Germany by the end of 2022. Read More(link is external)
• Prof. Manish K Tiwari (Mechanical Engineering, University College London): Professor Tiwari’s research focuses on interfaces – encompassing broad areas of small-scale manufacturing and transport phenomena with an emphasis on developing new energy and healthcare technologies. The funding will go towards his project, Bioinspired nanoengineering of robust films: multifunctional interfaces for enabling a sustainable future. Read More(link is external)

Acknowledging the results, President of the ERC Prof. Maria Leptin underlines that even in times of crisis and conflict and suffering, it is our duty to keep science on track and give our brightest minds free reign to explore their ideas.

List of funded proposals: #ERCCoG(link is external)

Principal investigators:  http://bit.ly/WinnersCoG2021(link is external)

More Details: https://erc.europa.eu/news/erc-2021-consolidator-grants-results

About the ERC

The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialisation. The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. Since 1 November 2021, Maria Leptin is the President of the ERC. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion, as part of the Horizon Europe programme, under the responsibility of the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/common/guidance/list-3rd-country-participation_horizon-euratom_en.pdf