ERC: five years fostering innovative ideas through excellence

Excellence and risk-taking in funding unconventional approaches to research are the two main recipes credited for the success of the first years of activity of the European Research Council, that celebrated its 5th Anniversary in Brussels yesterday and today with an event in which some outstanding grantees from all over Europe have presented their innovative research, including the Italian engineer Marco Dorigo, from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, who showed his fascinating colonies of robots on stage and in the video “Swarmanoid” that in 2011 won the Best Video Award at the American Association of Artificial Intelligence (click on the image to see it on youtube).

So far the ERC has funded more than 2,500 researchers from 53 countries working in little less than 500 different European research institutions, allocating 4.2 billion euros. One of the main goals of the ERC is opposing and reversing the “brain drain”.One of the many issues discussed during the event (you can find the very detailed press-release here) was the fact that most funding goes to a few institutions: «If 50 % of all ERC grants go to 50 institutions across Europe, it is obvious that they are extremely attractive to some of the best researchers» said ERC President Helga  Nowotny in her speech (available here). But what about the other 430 institutions? How to create creative environments among some of them?»

«Not only is it natural that the ERC is funding researchers at some of Europe’s top research institutions. It is also necessary, so that they can begin to compete with their global rivals» echoed EU Commissioner Marie Geoghegan-Quinn (download the speech). «And at the same time that half of ERC funding has gone to the top institutions, the other half has gone to over 400 other institutions across Europe. Some institutions have received a single ERC grant. That says to me that the European Research Council can find and reward excellence wherever it may be».

In the general climate of great appreciation for the work done and the results achieved, Danish Science Minister Morten Ostergaard listed three relevant areas in which he sees that there is still room for improvements: an even greater international dimension (“The number of researchers from outside Europe receiving ERC grants needs to be increased”), a better inclusion of women researchers (“we need to raise the number of female researchers applying for ERC grants”) and a less concentrated distribution of ERC grants with regard to institutions and countries, «not by compromising on the principle of Excellence, but by initiating efforts to raise the level of scientific excellence in low research intensive countries» (download the speech).

Whether and how this can be done, especially without compromising on the principle of excellence that has so far determined the success of the ERC funding activities, is open for debate.

What do you think?