On 28 April, applications for the European research Council (ERC) Advanced grants were closed. The ERC Scientific council allocated an approximate 555 million euros to these projects altogether, although this number may still be subject to change. This could fund 223 advanced grants, the selection of which has recently begun. Results are expected to be announced in April 2023. The total funding pool is lower than last year’s 624.6 million euros, which funded 253 researchers, as the ERC recently published when announcing the winners of the 2021 Advanced Grants.

The 2021 grantees are coming from 21 EU Member States and associated countries. It’s estimated that these grants will lead to the creation of 2300 new jobs in the field of research. Details and figures of the awarded 2021 grants can be found here.

ERC released preliminary data on this year’s applications, which showed that the total number of proposals were lower than 2021. The gender balance increased slightly: compared to last year, when 20,8% of the applications were made by women (although they received more than 25% of the total grants), in 2022 this number climbed to 23%. However, this still means that less than a quarter of the applications were made by women, which certainly leaves room for improvement. Regarding subjects, the number of applications for physical sciences and engineering was the highest by a significant margin. Social science and humanities took the second place, closely followed by life sciences.