A new in-depth analysis of all research projects funded by the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program for Research and Innovation has been published. The study "Mapping of ERC Frontier Research" contains thirty Fact Sheets that show the rich diversity of funded research, emerging areas of science, new methods and interdisciplinary links between research problems addressed by ERC grant recipients, as well as geographical patterns in the distribution of projects across Europe.
The mapping found that much of the research addresses key global challenges. Hundreds of these projects promote the EU's current policy objectives in climate change, health and digital transformation. Between 2014 and 2020, the ERC funded 6,707 research projects worth €13.3 billion.
Of the ERC projects analysed, 34% are likely to contribute to health policy, including cancer, brain, and human mind research. One in ten projects dealt with issues related to the digital transition, half of which were in the field of artificial intelligence. Finally, 14% were found to be relevant to climate policies and green solutions.
The Fact Sheets (available here) also provide some interesting insights on the distribution of ERC-funded projects between the EU Member States and Associated Countries. For example, while Germany is particularly strong in life sciences (LS) as well as physical sciences and engineering (PE), the UK and the Netherlands together host 40% of all social sciences and humanities projects. Some countries do very well in specific areas, e.g. 21% of all projects in mathematics are hosted in France and 31% of projects hosted in Poland are in informatics and computational sciences.