Objective: The aim is to provide support for a small group of two to four Principal Investigators to jointly address ambitious research problems that could not be addressed by the individual Principal Investigators and their teams working alone. Synergy projects should enable substantial advances at the frontiers of knowledge, stemming, for example, from the cross-fertilization of scientific fields, from new productive lines of enquiry, or new methods and techniques, including unconventional approaches and investigations at the interface between established disciplines. The transformative research funded by Synergy Grants should have the potential of becoming a benchmark on a global scale.

Principal Investigators must demonstrate the ground-breaking nature, ambition and feasibility of their scientific proposal. Principal Investigators must also demonstrate that their group can successfully bring together the scientific elements necessary to address the scope and complexity of the proposed research question.

One of the Principal Investigators must be designated as the Corresponding Principal Investigator. At any one time, one Principal Investigator per Synergy Grant Group except the Corresponding one can be hosted or engaged by an institution outside of the EU or Associated Countries.

Size of ERC Synergy Grants: Synergy Grants may be awarded up to a maximum of EUR 10 000 000 for a period of 6 years (reduced for projects of a shorter duration).

However, up to an additional EUR 4 000 000 in total can be requested in the proposal to cover additional costs (see further details).

Profile of the ERC Synergy Grant Principal Investigators: The ‘Synergy Grant Group’ applying for the ERC Synergy Grant must be made up of a minimum of two and a maximum of four Principal Investigators with competitive track records and, as necessary, their teams.

Each Principal Investigator must present as part of the proposal either an early achievement track-record or a 10-year track-record, whichever is most appropriate for their career stage (see Starting, Consolidator and Advanced Grant profiles in the ERC Work Programme 2023). There is little prospect of an application succeeding in the absence of such a record.

Further information can be found here.

If you want to apply for an ERC Synergy Grant, please contact the EU Office of the Dean of Research as early as possible.