Portugal hits new record of European Research Council grants

Four researchers from Portuguese institutions will be funded by the European Research Council (ERC) to the sum of 11.5 million euros, which represents 2.1% of the funding given under the ERC Advanced Grant 2022, the results of which will be announced on 30 March.

Portugal hit a new record: four projects approved in a single competition for the Advanced Grants, which, for the Portuguese Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education Elvira Fortunato "Is a reason for the country to be proud, especially the science and technology system". 

Overall, the ERC will fund 218 projects to a total sum of 544 million euros, 11.5 million of which will be given to Portugal, namely to Henrique Veiga Fernandes of the Champalimaud Foundation, Isabel Gordo of the Gulbenkian Science Institute, Maria Manuel Mota of the João Lobo Antunes Molecular Medicine Institute, and Mariana Pinho, of Universidade Nova de Lisboa. 

The ERC will also fund a project under way abroad by Gonçalo Castelo-Branco of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. 

In previous competitions under the ERC Advanced Grant, and included in the previous Horizon 2020 framework programme, Portugal had eight funded projects. In the current EU research and innovation funding programme, Horizon Europe, and in two competitions alone, Portugal has had seven projects selected. 

With this result, the country has had 65.6 million euros granted, distributed over 42 projects, an amount that includes all the ERC competitions (Starting, Consolidator, Advanced, Synergy, Proof of Concept) since the start of Horizon Europe (2021-2027) in the fields of Life Science, Exact Science and Engineering, and Social Science and Humanities.