Young European talent - facts and figures

(October 9th 2007) Grants for young scientists from the European Research Council were snapped up “like hot cakes” according to statistical information based on the first round of applications. Karin Hollricher takes a deeper look at the facts and figures.

Sure enough, one can interpret the first application round as a complete success for the European Research Council (ERC); 9167 proposals were submitted to win part of the ERC's 289.5 million euros. The keen participation is a crystal clear documentation of the distress experienced by young European talent.

According to statistics, the most desperate country for scientists 2-9 years after having done their PhD is Italy. Italians filed some 1700 from 8794 evaluated applications, followed by the Germans who submitted some 1000 proposals. This may reflect the bad and often criticised situation for research in (not so) 'Bella Italia' where working conditions and salaries are poor, especially for junior scientists. They leave the country, heading perhaps for Great Britain? The island attracts an above average number of scientists. Notably, only 550 scientists of all principal investigators (PIs) are British, on the other hand 1100 PIs that applied for ERC money are resident in Great Britain. Switzerland also appears to enjoy a comfortable brain gain, with the ERC statistics listing only around 100 Swiss PIs; however, twice as many people who applied for money are registered as living in the Alpine Republic.

The ERC's figures also document the notoriously deplorable situation for female scientists. In many of the "old" EC countries the proportion of female PIs was around 20 to 30 per cent. All these countries should aspire to Finland's example, where only half of all Finnish applicants were male. Wow! Italian women left a marked impression as 40% of the young scientist applicants were female and roughly 30% of the Italian finalists were also women. Wow again!

That leads us to the success rates. From 8794 peer-reviewed applicants, 559 have been invited to make a second-stage submission. Although the majority of finalists came from Germany, overall the Germans were not too successful with only 7% of them making it to the final round. Belgium and Icelandic applicants, however, faired much better. Approximately 20% of Belgium and 13% of Icelandic grant-seeking scientists can look forward to the second evaluation. By January 2008, the ERC will have selected about 250 scientists for funding. Each of them will be awarded roughly one million euros.

Finally, one of the most amusing and salient statistics was recorded for Cyprus, submitting 5 proposals per million inhabitants. The small country is also the front-runner in "proposals per thousand researchers". It seems that life as a scientist is an appealing profession in Cyprus.

More details are available at:

http://erc.europa.eu/pdf/erc-stg-statistics-stage1-20071001_en.pdf