Dear Researchers

Sign up by 23 September: Support for ERC Consolidator Grant Applicants

European Research Council Consolidator Grants (ERC CoG) are designed to support excellent Principal Investigators with 7-12 years of experience since the award of their PhD. CoG Call 2023 is expected to open 28 September (deadline 2 February 2023) and fund some 300 grants with the budget of 595 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 Calls. All researchers planning to submit ERC Consolidator Grant 2023 can express their interest to be included in the support process by answering to a short Webropol questionnaire by 23.9.2022. 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 Consolidator 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 call closing February 2023.

Timetable of the support process for ERC CoG 2023 applicants:

• early October: 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.
• October-January: 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
• January: 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 Consolidator Grant applicants. Support will be available for all the call categories and similar announcement to register will be published in November for the Advanced Grant 2023 applicants.