17th -18th of June 2013
Venue of the conference: Hotel Bôrik, Bratislava, Slovak Republic

The meeting - hosted by the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak
Republic and co-organised with the Slovak Organization for Research and Development Activities - was
in line with the ERC's efforts to widen participation in its calls in Central and Eastern Europe.

A public information event, “ERC: European funds for excellent researchers” - with ERC President
Helga Nowotny, Slovakia's State Secretary of Education, Science, Research and Sport Štefan Chudoba,
and ERC grantee Ján Tkáč among the speakers - took place on 17 June to inform researchers about
the funding opportunities that the ERC offers. The hope is that this will encourage more talent in Slovakia to apply for ERC funding and to increase their chances of success.

European Research Council (ERC)
Set up in 2007 by the European Union, the ERC aims to stimulate scientific excellence in Europe by
encouraging competition for funding between the very best, creative researchers of any nationality
and age based in Europe. Since its launch, the ERC has funded over 3,500 researchers and their
frontier research projects. It has also become a "benchmark" of the competitiveness of national
research systems complementing existing funding schemes at national and European levels. The ERC
operates according to an "investigator-driven", or "bottom-up" approach, allowing researchers to
identify new opportunities in all fields of research. The ERC, part of the EU's Seventh Research
Framework Programme, has a total budget of €7.5 billion from 2007 to 2013. The European
Commission proposed a substantial increase in the ERC's budget for 2014 to 2020 under the new
framework programme 'Horizon 2020'.
 

Download the presentations from the conference:
Helga Nowotny: ERC Approach to Excellence
Alejandro Martin-Hobdey: ERC: Submitting a proposal and the evaluation process
Thierry Prost: The management of ERC grants
Ján Tkáč: Sweet biochips