ERC Proof of Concept Grant

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  • EU Open Calls
ERC Proof of Concept Grant Projects funded
  • Coordinators: Horizon Europe
  • Opening of application: 13 November 2024
  • Allocated budget: EUR 150 000 lump sum (covering direct and indirect costs)
  • End of applications: 18 September 2025
  • Project duration: 18 months
  • Project submitted on: Open calls

Objective

Enable ERC-funded ideas to progress on the path from ground-breaking research towards innovation by facilitating exploration of the commercial and social innovation potential.

Priorities

  • Provide attractive, long-term funding to support excellent investigators (Principal Investigators) and their research teams to pursue ground-breaking and ambitious research.
  • Support new ways of working in the scientific world, and raise the profile of frontier research in Europe.
  • Set a clear and inspirational target for frontier research across Europe

Eligibility

single-stage submission and single-step evaluation procedure.

Principal Investigators

  • Principal Investigators in an ongoing ERC main grant, or Principal Investigators in an ERC main grant that has ended after 1 January 2024, are eligible
  • The Principal Investigator must be able to demonstrate the relation between the idea to be taken to proof of concept and the ERC frontier research project (Starting, Consolidator, Advanced or Synergy) in question.

Host institution

  • The Host Institution must either be established in an EU Member State or Asso ciated Country (AC) as a legal entity (public or private, including universities, research organisations and undertakings; private for-profit research centres, including industrial laboratories) created under national law, or it may be an International European Interest Organisation (such as CERN, EMBL, etc.), the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) or any other entity created under EU law.
  • International organisations with headquarters in an EU Member State or AC will be deemed to be established in this Member State or AC.
  • The PI can submit the PoC proposal with a different HI than the one where the ERC main frontier research grant is currently (or was) implemented, provided that this other HI complies with the eligibility criteria described in the Work programme.

Restrictions:

  • A Principal Investigator may submit only one application per call.
  • A maximum of three Proof of Concept Grants may be awarded per main grant project, except for Synergy Grant, in which case a maximum of six Proof of Concept Grants may be awarded per ERC funded project.
  • Synergy Grant Principal Investigators are eligible to apply only with the written consent of all Principal Investigators in the same Synergy Grant project.

Eligible activities

  • transitioning from exploratory research to an experimental proof of concept by developing initial concrete validations of the idea or technology derived from early scientific results.
  • testing, experimenting, demonstrating and validating the idea;
  • conducting research required to carry out the above activities and to address the weaknesses uncovered by them;
  • establishing viability, technical issues and overall direction;
  • clarifying IPR protection or knowledge transfer strategy;
  • involving industrial partners, societal or cultural organisations, policymakers or any other potential stakeholder supporting the translation of research results into innovation;
  • assessing potential “end users” of the expected innovation.   
Would you like to apply ?

Please follow the link below to European Commission website

Open call details
for more information, please contact our europe team

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