On 17 May 2017, the European Research Council (ERC) announced 51 grant holders who will receive top-up funding to explore the commercial or innovation potential of the results of their EU funded research.
The selected projects cover a variety of topics. Proof of concept grants, worth €150,000 each and open to ERC grant holders, can be used to establish intellectual property rights, investigate business opportunities or conduct technical validation. The grantees are based in Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. The budget of the overall 2017 Proof of Concept competition is €20 million. In this first round, the ERC evaluated 107 applications for grants.
Background:
The ERC is the first European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It offers three core grant schemes: starting, consolidator and advanced. Every year it selects and funds the very best, creative researchers to run projects based in Europe. So far, the ERC has funded nearly 7,000 top researchers at various stages of their careers.
More information about the awarded grants can be found here.
