Jul 23, 2021

ERC publishes 2022 work programme and first call openings for Synergy Grant and Proof of Concept

The European Research Council (ERC) published the Work Programme 2022 on 14 July 2021. A total budget of around 2.4 billion EUR is available for the 2022 work programme.

Synergy Grants provide support for a group of two to four researchers who wish to work together to tackle ambitious research problems that cannot be tackled by individual researchers and their teams alone. One of these Principal Investigators may be based outside Europe. The call for the Synergy Grants was published on 15 July 2021 with a deadline of 10 November 2021. The call documents will be published soon here.

On 15 July 2021, the first of two calls for the ERC Proof of Concept (PoC) which will be launched during the ERC Work Program 2022, is scheduled to open. The call falls completely in the calendar year 2021. Instead of the three cut-off dates that are otherwise available, the 2022-1 call has only a single deadline on 14 October 2021. However, the call comprises the full budget of EUR 25 million that is usual for PoC. The second call (2022-2) is expected to open on 16 November 2021 and will offer three cut-off dates in February, May and September of the following year.

The Public Engagement with Research Award will also be offered again after a successful pilot competition in 2020. Here, three ERC grantees in the three categories "Involve" for Citizen Science, "Inspire" for Public Outreach and "Influence" for Media and Policy will be awarded 10,000 EUR each. The competition is expected to open on 5 October 2021.

As a measure to facilitate Covid 19 impact for researchers, the work programme includes the possibility for applicants to mention in their proposal (Part B1) any specific situation caused by the pandemic that had a negative impact on their CV or track record. This will be considered when evaluating the proposals.

ERC work programme 2022 and further call deadlines (ERC StG, CoG, AdG, PoC and SyG) you will find on the ERC website.