Holland receives many European research grants

Many applications

The European research financier ERC received 2503 applications. Not even a tenth of those applications were ascribed: only 237. Holland received well over seven per cent of all grants. The financial contribution of Holland is about 5.5 per cent, which causes Dutch science to gain profit due to the system.

Britain at the top

Switzerland and Holland share the fifth place of most successful applicants. The United Kingdom is at the top, with 43 ascribed grants. France and Germany follow with respectively 31 and 28 ‘starting grants’. Spain takes the fourth place with 18 happy scientists.

Great-Britain is at the top thanks to its foreign scientists working inside the country. Scientists who have the British nationality received as many as grants as their Dutch colleagues. Germans and Italians have carried off the most grants. The third and fourth places were respectively for the French and the Belgians, just above the Dutch and British. The winners were approximately 36 years old and had completed their doctoral thesis eight years earlier. Less than a quarter of them were female.
 

ERC spends great amounts

The ERC spends 325 million euros on approximately 240 scientists. One receives a bit more than the other but on average this amount is 1.35 million euros. The maximum is two million. Not all grants have been ascribed yet; the ERC is expecting commitments of extra funds and will then reveal the rest of the winners. Yesterday’s list contains fifteen Dutchmen. According to the ERC’s statistics at least two more Dutchmen will join them.

Dutch applicants

The ERC does not give away information about the applicants, which makes it unclear how many Dutch scientists have filed an application. The high score could therefore be a reflection of the higher quality in Dutch applications, but also of a bigger amount of applicants. It is also not clear whether women have been given more or less grants than men.