Background
The program is open to researchers in all academic disciplines: medicine, engineering and technology, natural sciences, social sciences and humanities/religion, and also in the interfaces between them. The target group is researchers early in their careers with the potential to develop into the researchers and research leaders of tomorrow.
The objective of this program is to support basic research at the highest level.
Those who are nominated in 2025 must have received their PhDs after 1 January 2016.
Assessment of the nominees will be carried out by five subject-area review panels (for medicine; engineering and technology; natural sciences; social sciences; and humanities/religion) comprising five to nine members each, with particular consideration of the interfaces between the five areas. Each review panel is responsible for dividing the nominees into four groups according to their assessed quality. A summarizing rate will be submitted according to the ERC five-grade assessment scale, i.e.:
0 = Insufficient, 1 = Good, 2 = Very good, 3 = Excellent, 4 = Outstanding
The work includes thorough evaluation of the written documentation as well as personal interviews and consultations with external, international reviewers.
Implementation
Four overall criteria will be applied to the nominee assessment. The aspects given most weight will be academic quality, originality and feasibility of the proposed research program. Evaluated thereafter are academic results attained previously followed, in turn, by assessment of the nominee’s potential as an independent researcher and assessment of the nominee’s potential as a research leader.
In their assessment of scientific quality, originality and feasibility of the proposed research program, the review panels must take into account the following subsidiary criteria (with no internal ranking):
- The quality of the research program, its degree of innovativeness and its significance in terms of research development.
- Feasibility: can the research be carried out at the nominating university? Do the right infrastructure, resources and context exist?
- Documented academic quality of research carried out by the nominee to date.
Under the criterion of academic results attained previously, the review panels will (again without internal ranking) consider the following subsidiary criteria:
- Publications: quality from an international perspective and quantity.
- National and international awards.
- Documented academic breakthroughs.
- Positions held.
- A postdoctoral research stay (or equivalent) is expected for all nominees in medicine, engineering and technology, natural sciences, and social sciences.
Assessment of the nominee’s potential as an independent researcher consists in appraising, as far as possible, the nominee’s potential for development as a researcher, mainly based on the criteria and subsidiary criteria presented above and also on the personal interview. The nominee’s potential as a research leader is assessed, for the areas where this is relevant, on the basis of the following subsidiary criteria (without internal ranking):
- Professional positions and positions of trust held.
- Leadership training courses attended and appraised leadership capacity.
- Communicative ability.