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New association brings together current and former European Research Council grantees
An association has been launched for recipients of funding from the European Research Council—the EU’s flagship funder of bottom-up, basic research—with the aim of advocating for such research to policymakers and the public.
The Association of ERC Grantees announced on 23 September that it had been set up as an international non-profit organisation based out of the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, with a mission to “highlight, accelerate, and defend fundamental research in Europe”, according to its website.
The organisation, also known as AERG, says its first goal is to expand its membership to include all of the more than 10,000 ERC grantees.
It also aims to garner twice as many followers on social media and has already gained more than 520 followers on Twitter. It is asking researchers and research advocates to follow its social media accounts as it tries “to give voice, ambition and possibility to European scientists”.
AERG is governed by a general assembly composed of past and current ERC grantees, and is administered by a board of 18 members. Board president Axel Cleeremans, a professor of cognitive science at Université Libre de Bruxelles, told Research Professional News he thinks there is “tremendous potential” in bringing ERC grantees together.
“This community of 10,000 outstanding scientists can truly serve as Europe’s mind bank—there is so much talent and expertise there”, Cleeremans said. “AERG will carry as many activities as it can to network its members, communicate their best science and ideas to everybody and convince policy makers and stakeholders of the importance of fundamental research.”
He added that a “central goal” of AERG is to improve diversity in academia, and that it intends to carry out mentoring to increase the funding success rate of applicants from countries that are still developing their academic expertise and infrastructure.
This article was updated on 24 September with the comment from Axel Cleeremans.