The European Research Council (ERC) has announced the winners of its latest round of Starting Grants, awarding €705 million to 421 early-career researchers across Europe. The grants will support them at a crucial stage in their careers, helping them to pursue ambitious ideas and build their own teams.

The results highlight Europe’s growing appeal to world-class research talent. Twenty-one successful researchers currently based outside Europe will now move to the EU and Horizon Europe partner countries to carry out their projects, compared with eleven last year.

This year’s call attracted a record 4,807 proposals, representing a 22 per cent increase compared with last year’s 3,928 applications. Due to the strong competition, only 8.8 per cent of the proposals could be funded. Interest also increased amongst researchers based outside Europe. Specifically, 169 researchers based in the United States applied this year, compared with 116 in the previous call.

The selected projects cover a wide range of research areas, from the life sciences and engineering to the social sciences and the humanities. The new grant recipients will work at universities and research centres in twenty-five EU Member States and associated countries, primarily in Germany (89 grants), France (38), Switzerland (36) and the Netherlands (33). The successful applicants include 84 Germans, 50 Italians, 30 French and 24 Spaniards, as well as researchers of 48 other nationalities. The grants are expected to create more than 3,000 jobs within the teams of the new grant holders.

As part of the ‘Choose Europe’ initiative to attract and retain scientific talent, researchers moving to Europe will be able to apply for up to an additional two million euros to set up laboratories or research teams in Europe.