Three European starting grants for UT researchers

The European Research Council ERC made 408 young scientists happy with grants of 1.5 million euros on average. Forty of them work at Dutch universities and research institutes. UT scored well with starting grants for researchers Saskia Kelders, Guillaume Lajoinie and Tim Segers.

Photo: Guillaume Lajoinie, Saskia Kelders en Tim Segers.

The starting grants are meant for scientists who obtained their PhD two to seven years ago. For this round, almost three thousand applications were submitted, of which, as usual, only a small portion can be honoured; this year 15 per cent.

Bronze
The most grants went to scientists at German (81) and British (70) institutions. The Netherlands managed to receive no less than 40 starting grants and leaves France (39) right behind.

Of all grants, 28 went to scientists with the Dutch nationality. Those can also work at foreign institutions, just like – vice versa – international scientists submitted a grant application in The Netherlands.

In The Netherlands, scientists of the Radboud University and Utrecht University received the most grants this time.

Reservation
The ERC warns that the list of successful candidates can still drastically change. That is because the UK is officially ‘non-associated’ with Horizon Europe, the EU funding program for research and innovation from which the grants are paid. If it were to stay like that, then successful applications of British host institutes only receive their grant if they take it with them to a host institution in a country that is allowed to partake in Horizon Europe.

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