Why the CNRS tops European Research Council grants

One succeeded with the ERC on the first go, having chanced her luck "so I wouldn't regret not doing it but I wasn't all that optimistic." The other was awarded her grant after two unsuccessful submissions which led to her not really believing she could win. Both researchers draw the dual conclusion from their experience, namely that a significant amount of preparation is required to apply for grants from the European Research Council (ERC), the exploratory research branch of the EU's flagship Horizon Europe  research and innovation programme, but that those ERC awards are actually obtainable. And above all it's really worth the effort. 

The first, Clémence Rose, received one of 24 'Starting Grants' (see box) from the CNRS in 2023 for her Haven project involving marine aerosols. She was inspired to submit her project by her former thesis supervisor and current colleague at the Physical Meteorology Laboratory (LaMP)  who had herself been awarded an ERC grant. "I was able to see for myself the resources and influence offered by the grant to an individual and at laboratory level," recalls the young researcher. Her colleague's support in "formulating the scientific aspects of the project" also encouraged her to give it a go. Her CNRS regional office helped her assess and define her budget while CNRS Earth & Space and the National Contact Point (NCP) helped her prepare her oral presentation which "which needs to be cutting-edge for the experts but also appeal to those who aren't necessarily experts in the discipline."

The second, Maud Gratuze, was awarded one of the CNRS's 25 starting grants in 2024 for her project with the Institute of Neurophysiopathology  on the role of the ApoE4 gene, a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. She was still working on her postdoc in the United States and preparing to return to France when she first submitted her project which was unfortunately rejected for being "too ambitious". Unfortunately, Maud did not receive the assessors' comments in time to integrate them into her second submission but did so for her third attempt, cutting her project in half in accordance. "I didn't really believe in it at all after two unsuccessful attempts but it was my last chance and there were a lot of expectation in my professional environment," she explains as she recalls her winning bet. She also received support from the relevant departments of the CNRS and Aix-Marseille University. 

Since the launch of Horizon Europe at the start of 2021 , the CNRS has been awarded a total of 279 ERC grants which classes the organisation first among research institutions in terms of the number of projects selected. In fact, between the 2007 launch of these grants for excellence in frontier research and 2023, the CNRS was the leading beneficiary institution in Europe in terms of funding received with its total of €1.4 billion. However, the CNRS still aims keen to increase the number of applications to the ERC from its researchers. "Today, only a third of our young recruits submit ERC applications although they are all expected to do so within three or four years. Their very recruitment to the CNRS demonstrates they have the level required," explains Jean-Stéphane Dhersin, head of the CNRS's Representative Office in Brussels. Indeed, "the CNRS has a very high standard competitive recruitment process and the application file includes a research project that is easy to transpose to the ERC. The specifications are more or less the same and the ERC application's blank format aimed at attracting breakthrough proposals means all researchers can apply." The CNRS's upcoming 'Objectives, Resources and Performance Contract' sets out the target of a 20% increase in ERC projects submitted between 2024 and 2028.

But let's go back to our happy grant winners to find out what their still recently acquired status has already brought them, starting with substantial new resources. When Clémence Rose learned her project had been selected a month after her oral presentation, she called it "a nice surprise" but one which put her on "action stations." The researcher obtained an extra €500,000 on top of her €1.5 million grant so she could buy a mass spectrometer and she had to take delivery times into account so that the five-year depreciation schedule for the equipment would correspond to the five years covered by her grant. She is also planning to recruit technical staff and two post-doctoral fellows. In agreement with her ERC advisor, the researcher opted to let her project run its course even if that requires subsequently requesting a six-month or one-year extension. "Our exchanges were really smooth - Europe is well aware of the disruption being a mother can cause," she explains happily, although between 2021 and 2023, women at the CNRS only accounted for 31.9% of applications and 29.1% of selected projects. Clémence Rose says her project has been "nothing but positive" and that she is already benefiting from new collaboration opportunities and getting ready to position herself for new campaign of scientific measurements.

From a little house in the suburbs to the Château of Versailles

Maud Gratuze sees her ERC grant as having enabled her research project to move proverbially from "a little house in the suburbs in the suburbs to the château of Versailles" with the recruitment of two postdocs and funding for experiments. "Five years of not worrying about the budget will mean I can do things better and take my experiments further," says the researcher who can already see the new visibility her grant accords her and her "still young" Institute. "People get in touch asking me to represent them or the CNRS and things move much quicker when I want to collaborate with anyone," she sums up.

Over the years, the ERC's reputation has spread far beyond the borders of Europe. Sylvie Lorente, a member of the ERC's Scientific Council explains that ''as long as researchers in Europe and beyond agree to come and work in Europe, the ERC enables them to develop their creativity, get started with their ideas and create a research programme that will break down research barriers to an extent that's in line with their scientific ambitions." This Scientific Council is the authority that guarantees the programme's independence and revised its criteria for assessing applications in 2024 "to put more the emphasis on the project and less on the reputation of the researcher leading it." Sylvie Lorente sums this up by explaining that "what interests the ERC above all is the excellence of an idea that advances the frontiers of research and the ability of the researcher to put it into practice."

The Scientific Council's mission is also to "promote the ERC to political bodies and the general public," adds Sylvie Lorente, pointing out that the Scientific Council has voted to double the programme's budget for the next budgetary period running from 2028 to 2034. "The ERC receives a huge number of excellent project submissions that it can't finance through a lack of funds. If Europe is unable to support excellence properly, it will go and develop somewhere else which means the attractiveness of the continent actually depends on it, sandwiched as we are between the United States and China," she explains. "Also, the amount allocated to projects has not changed a lot since the programme was set up and inflation means that what we thought extraordinary 18 years ago has lost a lot of its attractivity".

In fact, the CNRS is defending this doubling of the ERC budget on its own behalf and with its European partners in the G6 as Jean-Stéphane Dhersin points out. The director of our Brussels office explains that in 2024 the role played by the ERC in enhancing the attractivity of European research was stressed in a series of reports on European research policies. These include Enrico Letta's report, the report by the mission of experts headed by the Portuguese former minister Manuel Heitor, the report by five economists including the Nobel winner Jean Tirole and Mario Draghi's now famous report on Europe's competitiveness. Sylvie Lorente stresses that "the CNRS is an important voice in supporting the ERC's budget," reiterating the idea that the agency's "legitimacy derives from its recognition by the scientific community of which the CNRS is a key stakeholder."

Anne Hérival