Space and time for grand ideas
The European Research Council officially inaugurated in Berlin
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EU Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik: The European Research Council promotes academic excellence (Foto: European Community 2007). Click here for a larger image.
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During a formal inauguration at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Berlin at the end of February 2007, roughly 280 academics and politicians from 30 countries celebrated the launch of the European Research Council (ERC). The celebration, which was attended by Federal Chancellor, Angela Merkel, Federal Minister of Research, Annette Schavan, EU Research Commissioner, Janez Potocnik, and the President of the German Research Foundation (DFG), Matthias Kleiner, marked the start of the first Europewide action to promote "Frontier Research." The kind of research the initiators are thinking of is that which surpasses your wildest dreams and opens up new opportunities for society in terms of scientific and technological progress. "Some of the most important scientific discoveries and progress came about because grand ideas were given space and time to develop. That is what we want to achieve through the ERC," EU Research Commissioner Potocnik emphasised in Berlin.
Anchored in the 7th Framework Programme's Specific Programme "Ideas", the European Research Council will exclusively sponsor projects that are excellent, highly innovative and investigator-driven from all fields of research. Up to 2013, such unconventional, scientific thought and behaviour, geared to exploring new paths of research, is receiving EU funding totalling 7.5 billion EUR. The most important success factor: academic excellence.
The ERC comprises the President, the Scientific Council (composed of 22 independent representatives of the European science community), an executive agency as well as the Commission, and officially started work on January 1st, 2007.
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