European Research Council 2020 Proof of Concept Call Open

The European Research Council (ERC) provides long-term funding to support excellent investigators and their research teams to pursue ground-breaking, high gain and high risk research. The ERC is a key component of Horizon 2020 and complements other European research and innovation platforms, such as those of the national research funding agencies.

The ERC operates five main grant programmes to support projects, one of which is the Proof of Concept Grants, which aim to maximise the value of the excellent research that the ERC funds, by funding further work (ie activities which were not scheduled to be funded by the original ERC frontier research grant) to verify the innovation potential of ideas arising from ERC funded projects.

Proof of Concept Grants are only on offer to Principal Investigators whose proposals draw substantially on their ERC funded research, which is either ongoing or has ended less than 12 months before 1 January 2020. The researcher may be residing in any country in the world at the time of application, but the host institution must be in an EU Member state or Associated Country.

The financial contribution will be up to a maximum of €150,000 for a period of 18 months. The ERC expects that normally, proof of concept projects should be completed within 12 months. However, to allow for those projects that require more preparation time, projects will be signed for 18 months.

The indicative budget for the 2020 Call is €25 million (approximately one-third of which will be for each of the three evaluation rounds following three specific deadlines).

The application deadlines are 21 January 2020, 23 April 2020 and 17 September 2020.

More information about this research funding opportunity and the application process is available on the RESEARCHconnect funding information platform. RESEARCHconnect provides up-to-the minute content, insight and analysis on research funding news and policy. To find out more about how RESEARCHconnect can keep you in the know, and subscription fees, contact us today.