New Academy of Sciences Program Already Has First ERC Grant Winners to Its Credit

Three of the six ERC Starting Grants awarded to the Czech Republic this year went to researchers at the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS). Two of them prepared their applications with support from the ERC Incubator (ERC-in), which the institution launched in January. How many applicants are currently “warming up” in the incubator to be better prepared for the competition for further European Research Council grants?

In this year’s ERC Starting Grant call for early-career researchers, only 8.8 percent of submitted applications were successful. With a success rate of 15.8 percent, the CAS performed nearly twice as well. The three new principal investigators are Hana Polášek-Sedláčková from the Institute of Biophysics of the CAS, Ondřej Mrózek from the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry of the CAS, and Hedwig Waters from the Institute of Ethnology of the CAS.

Mrózek and Waters were already able to draw on the new internal ERC Incubator Program (ERC-in) as they prepared for their interviews with the evaluation panel. The Academy Council of the CAS launched the program at the start of the year with a clear aim: to increase the number of applications submitted and to send researchers into the competition for top grants as well-prepared as possible.

Luděk Brož from the Institute of Ethnology of the CAS, the incubator’s scientific coordinator, noted that competition this year was fierce even by the demanding standards of the European Research Council. “All the more reason to congratulate our successful researchers. We are glad that ERC-in played a part in this by mentoring them. Being able to prepare for the interview with the support of someone who has been through it, and to rehearse the situation in mock interviews, is invaluable,” Brož said. He added that in a close competition, this kind of preparation can easily become the factor that decides between success and failure: “I believe the Academy’s results will be even better in the years to come.”

Small numbers, higher success rate
One of the incubator’s first tasks was to establish how the CAS performs overall in the competition for European Research Council grants. Since 2021, for example, it has won nine ERC Starting Grants. The largest share, three in total, went to the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry. The distribution across years is uneven, however. In two calls no one from the Academy succeeded, whereas this year’s three grants are the second-best result since the Horizon Europe framework program began in 2021.

“The small-numbers effect can be misleading, so drawing far-reaching conclusions from a single year is not really appropriate,” Brož continued. In his view, the success rate over a longer period is more telling. For ERC Starting Grants, the CAS’s average of 14.3 percent is slightly above the European rate, which stands at 12.2 percent under Horizon Europe.

Grant preparations continue as dozens of applications come in
To date, the incubator has received 86 requests for support and approved the vast majority of them. Nearly sixty applicants are now preparing under its guidance for the October ERC Starting Grant call and the January ERC Consolidator Grant call. Three researchers submitted their projects to the ERC Advanced Grant call with the incubator’s support.

One of the Academy’s main goals in establishing the incubator – increasing the number of grant applicants – is being met so far. As Brož emphasized, however, a preliminary assessment of ERC-in’s activities will only make sense after its first year of operation: “Right now, our main focus is to keep working hard and to ensure that the success rate of new applications does not fall below the previous one – or, ideally, exceeds it.”

A pilot ERC Week, which the CAS is planning for late January and early February next year, is also intended to help. It will include several events. One will be aimed at those considering an ERC grant application, another will bring together applicants already preparing in the incubator and their mentors, and others will support grant office specialists from CAS institutes.

“Let us hope that in the years to come we will again have enough promising researchers with the ambition to secure one of the ERC grants,” Brož concluded. The advice he gave researchers when the incubator was launched therefore still stands: “If you want a chance to win, you have to take part – so submit a proposal.”

Recommended deadlines for submitting applications to ERC-in and other useful information are available on the CAS internal portal.

Prepared by: Zuzana Dupalová and Luděk Svoboda, External Relations Division, CAO of the CAS
Translated by: Aneta Ryntová, External Relations Division, CAO of the CAS
Photo: Shutterstock

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