Elsevier

New Biotechnology

Volume 25, Issue 1, June 2008, Pages 35-36
New Biotechnology

YEBN
Interview with Professor Fotis C. Kafatos, President of the European Research Council

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbt.2008.04.006Get rights and content

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The first call of the ERC was focused on starting grants for young researchers; why this important choice?

It is widely perceived that several countries in Europe offer insufficient opportunities for young investigators to develop independent careers and make the transition from working under a supervisor to being independent research leaders in their own right. This structural problem leads to a dramatic waste of research talent in Europe. It limits or delays the emergence of the next generation of researchers, who bring new ideas and energy, and it encourages highly talented researchers at an

Can you briefly summarise the results of the first call (the average age of the applicants, topics covered, size of the grants, success rate)?

The Starting Grants competition – the first ERC call – stirred great interest throughout the research community. Over 9000 applications were submitted by the deadline of 25 April 2007, by PIs of 88 nationalities, in conjunction with host institutions based in all parts of the EU and countries associated to the research framework programme. Of the 559 successful candidates at the first stage, 554 investigators of 38 nationalities in 21 countries submitted full proposals; 431 then passed the

Being an outstanding researcher is not the only factor needed in order to be an excellent group leader, financial and human resource management capabilities as well as outreach experiences are required in order to meet the increasing demands of society. Does the ERC take into account these criteria in its selection and to what extent?

The ERC Scientific Council has stressed on various occasions that it will provide funding on the basis of competition, with excellence being the sole criterion. An already established and recognised group leader (this is the expected applicant profile for the recently published ERC Advanced Investigator Grants) is expected to have an excellent research output/track record, a very high intellectual capacity and creativity, as well as ability to demonstrate that he or she is able to confront

Could you give us a flavour of the ERC future policies for young researchers?

ERC is a young funding agency, and we wish to establish a sense of stability in its activities during its early operation. Of course the Scientific Council is attentive to the evolving needs of the research community including young researchers. The ERC Scientific Council will therefore analyse in depth the data of the first ERC Starting Grant call. Although this sample is significant (over 9000 young applicants), we are very aware that this was only the first ERC call. We wish to extend the

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to T. Papazoglou and W. Cannell for invaluable help in drafting this text.

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