FP7/IDEAS COORDINATION AND SUPPORT ACTION (CSA) CALL IDENTIFIER: ERC PROOF OF CONCEPT 2011

                                                                                                      Total budget of the call: EUR 10.000.000

The European Research Council (ERC) is a European funding initiative, designed to support the best scientists, engineers and scholars in Europe.The ERC mandate is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-initiated frontier research across all fields of research, on the basis of scientific excellence.
Two types of ERC grants are currently available to support researchers in carrying out frontier research projects: ERC Starting Independent Researcher Grant (ERC Starting Grant), and ERC Advanced Investigator Grant (ERC Advanced Grant).
The ERC Proof of concept provides additional funding to ERC grant holders to establish proof of concept, identify a development path and an Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) strategy for ideas arising from an ERC-funded project. The objective is to provide funds to enable ERC-funded ideas to be brought to a pre-demonstration stage where potential commercialisation opportunities have been identified.

The aim is that of conducting a proof of concept of an idea that was generated in the course of the ERC-funded project, i.e. to undertake further work to verify whether, in principle, this idea has near term market potential. This would help:

    - establishing viability, technical issues and overall direction
    - clarifying IPR position and strategy
    - providing feedback for budgeting and other forms of commercial discussion
    - providing connections to later stage funding
    - covering initial expenses for establishing a company

Eligibility

Eligible Principal Investigator

All Principal Investigators benefitting from an ERC Advanced or Starting Grant that is either ongoing or ,where the project has ended26, less than 12 months before the publication date of this call are eligible to participate and apply for an ERC proof of concept funding.

Fundamental research often generates unexpected or new opportunities for commercial application and the ERC is particularly keen in helping to ensure that the useful excellent ideas that it has already funded do not miss these opportunities. The proof of concept funding looks to build upon ideas which draw substantially from research that has been funded by the ERC and it is therefore an offered only to Principal Investigators whose proposals draw substantially on the outputs of previous ERC-funded research.
Applicants will need to demonstrate the relation between the idea to be taken to proof of concept and the ERC Advanced or Starting Grant in question.

Only one proof of concept grant may be awarded per each ERC funded project.

Eligible Host Institution (Applicant Legal Entity)

The host institution must engage the Principal Investigator for at least the duration of the proof of concept activity and must be established in a Member State or an associated country. It may also be an International European Interest Organisation (such as CERN, EMBL, etc.) or the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC). Any type of legal entity, including universities, research organisations as well as undertakings can host the Principal Investigator and his/her team.

Budget for the call: € 10 000 000

Deadline: 8 November 2011

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