European Research Council (ERC) funding

The ERC (as Part of Horizon Europe Pillar 1, Excellent Science) aims to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields based on scientific excellence. 

It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe.

The ERC offers the following funding schemes: 

Please note that a researcher may participate as PI in only one ERC main frontier research grant project at any one time (this includes SyG). 

A researcher participating as PI in one of the main frontier research grants may not submit another proposal for a main ERC grant, unless the existing project ends less than two years after the call deadline. 

If a researcher applies to more than one main ERC frontier research grant call published under the same Work Programme (i.e. from the same ‘call year’), only the first eligible proposal will be evaluated. 

Please make sure you check the restrictions of the relevant Work Programme of the call you are applying for.

First steps and who to contact

PIs should initially liaise with the dedicated grant support in their Departments and Institutes. 

Given the complexity of these applications, please seek Departmental support well in advance of the Research Office intent to apply deadline and EC deadline.

Departmental contacts

PIs who are leading large EU applications can contact Chris Bird, cdb29@cam.ac.uk for additional support including a (non-scientific) review of the draft application against the scheme criteria.

PIs who are interested in applying to Horizon Europe funding should contact Dr Elizabeth Penner eap49@cam.ac.uk to discuss the development of your project proposal.

If your proposal is large, both in value and complexity, and would benefit from cross-departmental academic engagement, external stakeholder involvement, or impact pipeline development, please contact cm2199@medschl.cam.ac.uk

If your proposal would benefit from cross-departmental academic engagement, external stakeholder involvement, or impact pipeline development, please contact Abi.Herrmann@admin.cam.ac.uk

Support is available for cross-School applications including project management of the submission preparation; non-scientific input and review; arranging peer review; and if relevant, practice interviews. 

Please contact The Research Funding Team in the Research Strategy Office researchstrategy@admin.cam.ac.uk to discuss your specific needs.

Useful links