30-04-2015
In 2014, Portugal registered a significant growth in this type of grants. This growth can reverse the modest position occupied by our country when compared to Member States with a similar population. However, there remain countries with less population, such as Denmark and Finland, with more accumulated grants.
The ERC (European Research Council - ERC) gives three types of grants, each of them with five years duration: The "Starting Grants" ranging up to 2 million euros, to which can enable scientists with a two to seven years long career after his doctorate. After this, ERC gives "Consolidator Grants", whose value can go up to 2.75 million Euros, which are awarded to scientists with seven to twelve year career after their PhD. Finally, we have the "Advanced Grants" value up to 3.5 million Euros, which are attributed to scientists that in the last ten years have shown significant results in his research,
Being the ERC grants highly competitive, these translate the international excellence of the winning projects. The fact that Portugal has managed to increase the number of achieved ERC grants, is really a sign that the Portuguese scientific tissue is increasingly better prepared for the challenges posed by the new EU framework Programme, Horizon 2020.
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