15 successful Starting Grantees
European-wide, Max Planck ranks first in success rates for ERC Starting Grants 2022, together with the CNRS
In the latest call of ERC Starting Grants, the Max Planck Society has achieved an excellent result with 15 grants and a success rate of 27.3 percent. Together with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) (also 15 grants), Max Planck occupies first place in Europe. The Helmholtz Association and Ghent University follow in second place with ten grants each. The Technical University of Munich, Tel Aviv University and the University of Copenhagen are in third place with eight grants each. The ERC Starting Grants are endowed with an average of 1.5 million euros and are intended to help ambitious young researchers launch their own projects, form their teams and pursue their best ideas.
Among the 15 Max Planck grantees are five female scientists, which corresponds to a success rate of 33.33 percent and comes close to the overall rate of successful female applicants. For the 2022 call, this is 39.5 percent out of 161 funded proposals.
Chemistry, Physics & Technology
Martina Delbianco, MPI for Colloid and Interface Research
Kelvin Anggara, MPI for Solid State Research
Vivek Venkatraman Krishnan, MPI for Radio Astronomy
Thomas Kupfer, MPI for Astrophysics
Sebastian Oener, Fritz Haber Institute
Rajaprakash Ramachandramoorthy, MPI for Iron Research GmbH
Uri Vool, MPI for Chemical Physics of Solids
Georg Zetzsche, MPI for Software Systems Kaiserslautern
Biology & Medicine
Kerstin Göpfrich, MPI for Medical Research
Angelika Harbauer, MPI for Biological Intelligence (in foundation)
Eugene Kim, MPI for Biophysics
Henrike Niederholtmeyer, MPI for Terrestrial Microbiology
Ruben Garrido-Oter, MPI for Plant Breeding Research
Peter‘t Hart, Chemical Genomics Centre (MPI of Molecular Physiology)
Charles Underwood, MPI for Plant Breeding Research
In terms of host organisations, Germany once again leads the ranking (81 grants), followed by the United Kingdom (70 grants), the Netherlands (40 grants) and France (39 grants). Out of a total of 2932 applications submitted, 408 were accepted across Europe.
With the ERC Starting Grants, the European Research Council supports promising researchers who are at the beginning of an independent research career. The grants, which will total €677 million in 2022, help them build their own teams and conduct groundbreaking research in all disciplines. The grants are part of the EU's research and innovation program, Horizon Europe.
