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Mobility of PIs due to Grant Portability
Although the ERC agreements are signed with research organisations, they are personalized. ERC Grants are
portable, allowing researchers to change institution and take their grant with them to a new research organisa-
tion located in the same or in a different country. However a very small percentage of researchers choose this
option - mainly when a better working environment or a permanent position is offered to them. It should be noted
that in Greece, from 2007 to 2011, only one ERC Starting Grant holder had requested grant portability so far and
that was to another Greek institution.
Mobility in the Career Paths
of Excellent Researchers & the Relevance of the USA
Mobility plays an important role in individual research careers and is one of the main drivers in the competitive
development of the ERA.
First analyses of the career paths of Greek ERC Grant holders provide interesting observations. As such, the ca-
reer paths of the 14 Starting grantees hosted by Geek research institutions show that 13 out of 14 had obtained
a degree, a PhD and/or had a post-doc position abroad. At least 9 out of 14 were hosted by two different foreign
research institutions, located in the same or different countries. For 10 out of the 14 Starting Grant holders one
or more of these 3 steps were completed in a US research institution.
Repatriation rather than Attraction of Non-ERA Researchers
ERC competitions are open to any researcher anywhere in the world who wants to conduct a research project in
an EU Member State or FP7 Associated Country. In this sense, ERC efforts have been focused on attracting re-
searchers from countries outside the ERA (European and non-European). However, the number of applications
and ERC grantees from non-ERA countries is still quite limited. The eight completed calls for proposals attracted
less than 700 applications (3%) from researchers who reside in countries outside the European Research Area,
most of them having their previous residence in the USA. In total, the ERC has funded 74 researchers who, at the
time of application, were resident outside the ERA: 55 (or 74%) and 19 (26%) have been funded by the Starting
and Advanced funding scheme respectively. The Starting Grants seem to be an adequate instrument to attract
young researchers for a research position in Europe. In particular, if the host institutions can offer additional
incentives (ie. permanent positions, family support mechanisms, etc). In contrast, typical Advanced Grant hold-
ers already have a fixed position, are settled in their environment and scientific network, and thus less mobile.
It should be noted that 56 of the 74 non-ERA residents that have been funded in the ERC calls (about 75%) are
nationals of EU Member States and of Associated Countries and therefore we should mainly talk about repatria-
tion rather than attraction of non-ERA nationals to the European research system
(14)
.
Greece has repatriated 3 Greek researchers, all of them ERC Starting Grant holders that were in the US at the
time of the Grant Agreement.
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IMPACT AND MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS of the ERC in the ERA & in Greece