Support Services for ERC Starting and Synergy Grant Applicants – Sign up by 31 May

European Research Council Starting Grants (ERC StG) are designed to support excellent Principal Investigators with 2-7 years of experience since the award of their PhD. StG Call 2023 is expected to open 12 July (deadline 25 October 2022) and fund some 407 grants with the budget of 628 million euros.

ERC Synergy Grants (ERC SyG) support a group of two to maximum four Principal Investigators working together and bringing different skills and resources to tackle ambitious research problems. The PIs can be from same or different institutions and no specific eligibility window regarding the academic age is required. SyG Call 2023 is expected to open 13 July (deadline 8 November 2022) and fund some 30 grants with the budget of 300 million euros.

University of Oulu wants to encourage its researchers to apply for ERC and will provide a support scheme for selected applicants to prepare for the 2023 Call. All researchers planning to submit ERC Starting or ERC Synergy Grant 2023 can express their interest to be included in the support process by answering to a short Webropol questionnaire by 31.5.2022. The applicants will be asked to provide a short description of the research idea (max. 2000 characters). All information provided will be kept confidential. The Research and Project Services will assess the technical eligibility of the applicants against the ERC Starting or Synergy eligibility criteria. The applicants who are selected for the coaching will follow a pre-agreed timetable for the proposal preparation and submit their final proposal to the respective calls closing October and November 2022.

Timetable of the support process for ERC StG and SyG 2023 applicants:

• June: Proposal preparation kick-off: Research and Project Services will schedule a short meeting with the PI to go through the main aspects of ERC, proposal templates and discuss the preparation process.
• June 20th and 21st 10:30 - 13:00:  Yellow Research ERC Masterclass Part 1 and 2 live webinars for ERC proposal writing. Access to the YR online platform and materials will be available for the whole call period. 
• August-October: Proposal preparation coaching sessions. The proposal drafts will be reviewed in stages by the Research Funding Specialist of the Faculty and a scientific peer mentor. The coaching will provide the PIs with feedback on e.g.:
• PI profile: CV and Track Record
• Key ideas and concept of the ERC project
• Ground-breaking nature of the research project
• Feasibility of the outlined scientific approach
• early October/mid-October: Final draft proposal reviewed by an external expert specialised in the ERC funding
• limited number of reviews: will be allocated to the PIs based on the advancement of the proposal preparation

• In addition, the following technical support will be provided to the PIs:
  - Annotated proposal templates
  - Budget table and support with the budget preparation
  - Support from the Research Funding Specialists to fill in the Funding and Tenders Portal administrative forms, comment draft applications etc.

Note this call to express interest to be included in the support process is targeted at Starting and Synergy Grant applicants. Support will be available for the other call categories and similar announcement to register will be published in August for Consolidator and November for Advanced Grant 2023 applicants.

Br,

Johanna