The winners of 2024 ERC Starting Grants from the CNRS
The European Research Council (ERC) has just announced the winners of its 'Starting' grants which provide substantial funding for projects involving young researchers. The CNRS is the host institution for 25 grant-winning projects.
In 2024, the European Research Council (ERC) selected 494 scientists in Europe to be awarded a 'Starting' grant worth a total of €780 million from the Horizon Europe framework programme. The Council received 3474 applications which means there was a success rate of 14.2 %.
The aim of this funding, with its total budget of €1.5 million, is to support exploratory research projects that last a maximum of 5 years. These grants are for scientists who obtained their PhD between 2 and 7 years ago. 'Starting' grants are the first type of European financing for young researchers and come before 'Consolidator' grants (up to €2 million, between 7 and 12 years after the PhD) and 'Advanced' grants (up to €2.5 million, for established researchers).
This year, 44 % of the grants were awarded to female researchers - the highest proportion since the 'Starting' programme began. A point that delights Iliana Ivanova, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth: "In this call, I am happy to see one of the highest shares of female grantees to date, a trend that I hope will continue".
The grant-winners come from 24 European countries including Germany (98 projects), the Netherlands (51), the United Kingdom (50) and France (49). ERC President Maria Leptin welcomes the return of UK scientists to the Horizon Europe programme : "I am particularly pleased to welcome UK researchers back to the ERC. They have been sorely missed over the past years. With fifty grants awarded to researchers based in the UK, this influx is good for the research community overall”.
As for the CNRS, with 51 % of French prizewinners, the organisation is continuing to make progress since 2022, although it is still 12 % behind its performance in the years 2017-2021.
The list of 25 scientists awarded Starting Grants who belong to the CNRS:
- Emanuele Arioli – CAROLUS – CNRS Humanities & Social Sciences
- Hugo Bisio Sabaris – ViDaMa – CNRS Biology
- Amélie Cabirol – Micro-Cog – CNRS Biology
- Fanny Cazettes – DIVERSE – CNRS Biology
- Zayna Chaker – NSC-CoDEC – CNRS Biology
- Isabelle Dautriche – ThoughtOrigins – CNRS Biology
- Rafael Galupa – REGULADOSIX – CNRS Biology
- Charlotte Gervillié – INFRALYTICS – CNRS Chimie
- Anna Grau Galofré – IceFloods – CNRS Earth & Space
- Nicolas Keriven – Malaga – CNRS Informatics
- Baptiste Libé-Philippot – CerebEvol – CNRS Biology
- Arthur Marguerite – Thermoscopy – CNRS Physics
- Maud Gratuze – SynApoE – CNRS Biology
- Thibault Lefeuvre – ADG – CNRS Mathematics
- Marion Mathelié-Guinlet – PUMBA – CNRS CNRS Chemistry
- Romain Millan – IceDaM – CNRS Earth & Space
- Tomoya Nakai – MathDevCCN – CNRS Humanities & Social Sciences
- Denys Nikolayev – BESSEL – CNRS Engineering
- Sandrine Péron-Heriveaux – Kryptonis – CNRS Earth & Space
- Nils Raedecker – PhagoPhoRe – CNRS Ecology & Environment
- Adrien Sauvaget – SpiCE – CNRS Mathematics
- Ashleigh Shannon – NidoRep – CNRS Biology
- Emmanuel Siefert – DynaMorph – CNRS Physics
- Olivier Sulpis – Deep-C – CNRS Earth & Space
- Morgane Thion – MicroBBB – CNRS Biology