12 IEEE PULSE ▼ MARCH/APRIL 2011

By Nadya Anscombe

The Dream Factory

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPUL.2011.940392

pplying for research funding in the European Union (EU) can be a lengthy, arduous process littered with bureaucratic hurdles and paperwork. Under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), the projects need to involve partners from several

different European countries, and there is a lot of paperwork for the principal investigator. The projects that receive funding are also often based on applied or more commercial work and depend on the political priorities of the member states at the time.

Today, however, there is another source of funding open to the researchers, which claims to give the research-er more freedom and flexibility, less paperwork and bureau-cracy, and more time to simply get on with their research. It almost sounds too good to be true, but in 2007, after wide-spread discussions between European scientists, scholars, and research umbrella organizations, the European Commission set up the European Research Council (ERC). Its remit is to support investigator-driven research of the highest quality and combat the prevailing fragmentation of research efforts in Europe.

Instead of funding projects in certain themes, the ERC awards Starting Grants (for researchers either wanting to set up a new research group or consoli-date a group) and Advanced Grants (for research-ers who are already regarded as leaders in their field). Its focus is not basic or applied research but rather frontier research, a phrase coined by the ERC to describe research directed toward fundamental advances at and beyond the

Date of publication: 28 April 2011

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2154-2287/11/$26.00©2011 IEEE

The European Research Council Promises to Fund High-Risk Research

MARCH/APRIL 2011 ▼ IEEE PULSE 13

frontier of knowledge. It is not run by bureaucrats but instead a scientific council, a panel of 22 top scien-tists and scholars (see “The ERC at a Glance” and “ERC Grants”).

“Our motto is ‘trust the scientist’,” says Alejandro Martin-Hobdey, the head of the unit for the ERC’s Starting Grant scheme. “We want to give our researchers the freedom and flexibility to do good research so that our applica-tions are relatively short, we have few rules, and we do not expect projects to fit into certain themes.”

This system actively encourages interdisciplinary research because any research projects on any topic will be considered. “It is not the researcher’s obligation to fit into a theme,” says Martin-Hobdey. “It is our obligation to make sure the application is treated fairly and properly, so if, for example, an application is submitted to an engineering panel but is applicable to medicine or biology, we make sure all the relevant panels contribute to the evaluation.”

The ERC even keeps a proportion of its funds back for research that is so interdisciplinary that individual panels can-not decide whether to fund it. In these cases, all the panel chairs meet to decide which projects to fund.

In 2010, the ERC awarded about ;580 million to 427 early career researchers in its competition for Starting Grants, with each grant worth up to ;2 million. “This may sound like a lot of money,” says Martin-Hobdey, “but there is a huge demand for this type of funding, and when compared with the rest of the FP7 Framework or U.S. agencies such as the National Science Foundation, our budget is relatively small.”

The ERC was set up with a budget of ;7.5 billion for five years. From the beginning, the plan was to ramp up the funding each year, and this year, the value of Starting Grants handed out was about 60% higher than that in the

last year. This increase is higher than originally planned because of the huge demand for Starting Grants. “We will continue ramping up until, in 2013, we plan to award a total of ;1.7 billion worth of grants,” says Martin-Hobdey.

In the first year, when the research community was not sure what to ex-pect from the ERC, more than 9,000 researchers applied for Starting Grants, with only a 3% success rate. Today, however, the research community has a better understanding of what the ERC is looking for in a grant applica-tion and the number of applicants sta-bilized in the last call to around 3,000, with a 15% success rate.

So, what is the ERC looking for? Prof. František Štepánek from the

Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague, the Czech Re-public, was one of the first researchers to receive a Start-ing Grant (see “Research Projects Funded by the ERC”). He believes that he was successful because his idea of chemi-cal swarm robots that deliver active ingredients inside the body was “a little bit crazy, but doable.”

He told IEEE Pulse , “The ERC is looking for high-risk, high-gain research. I could have found funding from other sources, but I would have had to be more conservative with my aims.”

He says, receiving an ERC Starting Grant has significantly changed the way he works. “It is great that it is a large grant.

It means I am not distracted by apply-ing for lots of little grants and other administrative work. I have my free-dom back.”

However, he admits that writing the proposal was challenging. “I took three months off to write a proposal,” he says. “It was very different from writing pro-posals for other EU-funded research. I was given a lot more freedom to write what I wanted, and this can be particu-larly challenging.”

Giacomo Indiveri from the Institute of Neuroinformatics (INI) in Zurich, Switzerland, had a different experience.

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“Read the guidelines closely. It seems obvious, but the reviewers are assigning

marks based on exactly what is described in the guidelines. It is frontier

research so just proposing to spend a lot of money on many experiments is not enough—there has to be some

risk/technical challenge proposed that advances the field.“

—Prof. Fergal O’Brien

Alejandro Martin-Hobdey, the head of the Starting Grant Scheme at the European Research Council. [Photo courtesy of AMH (Martin-Hobdey).]

14 IEEE PULSE ▼ MARCH/APRIL 2011

He recently received his Starting Grant and is yet to start work-ing on the project to develop neuromorphic processors (see “Growing Bones”). “I received excellent guidelines and training from the Swiss National Contact point (euresearch.ch) and found the ERC application proce-dure more straightforward than those used in other EU FP7-funding schemes. When applying for funding under the FP7 Cooperation Programme, you are given a series of templates, and you have to input data such as deliver-ables, milestones, person months, and

work-plan Gantt charts,” says Indiveri. “But the ERC proposal is much less constrained, and I found that liberating. However,

part of the application requires you to describe your career and scientific suc-cess, and the hardest part in writing the proposal was the self-proclaiming part of the application.”

Indiveri’s proposal was 15 pages long, and the first seven pages were simply about himself and his academic achievements. This is common for a grant that funds the researcher, rather than the project.

The ERC at a Glance

Basic Facts ▼ About 4,000 applications are expected this year, with a

success rate of around 15%.

▼ The ERC’s total budget for five years is €7.5 billion.

▼ The ERC funds projects in three domains: physical sciences

and engineering, life sciences and social sciences, and

humanities.

▼ Research projects do not need to fit into one of these

domains, and interdisciplinary research is actively

encouraged.

▼ The ERC grants are available to any researchers of any

age and nationality working in any research area, as long

as the majority of the work is carried out in a European

institution.

▼ The grants are portable; if a researcher is working in one

country and wants to move to another European country,

they can still avail the grant.

Interesting Statistics ▼ In 2010, the ERC-funded researchers of 39 different

nationalities situated in 21 different countries in Europe.

▼ The number of successful researchers coming from outside

Europe in this year’s Starting Grant competition has doubled

from that in the last year. Of these 18 incoming scientists, 12

are Europeans returning from the United States.

▼ The average age of the selected researchers is about 36

years and 26.5% are women, which is an increase from last

year’s 23%.

▼ The countries that invest a high proportion of their

gross domestic product (GDP) (e.g., Switzerland and

Israel) in research tend to do well in the ERC grant

competitions.

▼ The statistics for Starting and Advanced Grants can yield

surprising results. For example, in the United Kingdom,

the minority of Starting Grant holders are U.K. citizens,

whereas the majority of Advanced Grant holders are U.K.

citizens.

▼ The Starting Grant applicants from Australia and the United

States do particularly well, with a success rate of 45 and 26%,

respectively. Although the number of applicants from these

countries is relatively small, their high success rate shows

that they are high-quality applicants.

“I recommend that anyone applying for an ERC grant should attend seminars organized by their national contact

point. These will give applicants a better idea of what the ERC is looking for.“

—Prof. František Štěpánek

ERC Grants

ERC Starting Grant in Brief ▼ Researchers from various fields can apply for the ERC

Starting Grant. The ERC Starting Grant is for early-career top

researchers of any nationality and age, with 2–12 years of

experience after Ph.D. degree

▼ supports early-career top research leaders who are about to

establish or consolidate their own research team and to start

conducting independent research in Europe

▼ funds up to €2 million per grant for up to five years

▼ Calls for Proposals: published annually in summer with the

deadlines in autumn

▼ funds pioneering frontier research in any field

▼ encourages interdisciplinarity.

ERC Advanced Grant in BriefThe ERC Advanced Grant

▼ supports the candidates from any nationality, provided they

are scientifically independent and have a recent research

track record and profile that identifies them as leaders in

their respective field(s) of research

▼ funds up to €3.5 million per grant (normally up to €2.5

million) for up to five years

▼ Calls for Proposals: published annually in autumn with the

deadlines in spring.

MARCH/APRIL 2011 ▼ IEEE PULSE 15

Research Projects Funded by the ERC Faster MRI Scans

Principal Investigator: Prof. František Štěpánek

Country: Czech Republic

Grant: Starting Grant, ;1.65 million, 2007

Name of the Project: Chemical Processing by Swarm Robotics

(CHOBOTIX)

Prof. František Štěpánek’s and his colleagues at the Institute of

Chemical Technology in Prague are developing chemical robots

that mimic single-cell organisms (Figure S1). This project aims at

designing and fabricating miniature spongelike porous structures,

which will have the ability to expand or shrink after an external

stimulus, thereby functioning as an artificial equivalent of glands

(Figures S2 and S3). Such artificial glands can have many interesting

technological applications in the areas, including controlled release

and delivery of drugs or agrochemicals, tissue engineering, or

autonomous sensor–actuator systems. The main challenges of the

project will be the biomimetic engineering of simple, yet functional

porous media that capture the essential functions of glands and

the fabrication of functional prototypes of such structures from

suitable materials (stimuli-responsive polymers) by three-

dimensional ink-jet printing.

“We are now at the stage where we have developed a

fabrication process and have started testing our chemical robots,”

says Štěpánek. “The tests include controlled release of active

ingredients, diffusion rates, and their interactions with their

environment.“

His group is working toward different applications. The first, and

probably the one that has a chance to be commercialized first, is the

controlled delivery of antibacterial agents in intelligent cleaning

applications such as medical equipment in hospitals. “We can

design an aerosol that binds to specific bacteria,” says Štěpánek. “As

FIGURE S1 An analogy between a living cell and chemical robot, showing the internal reservoirs where molecular precursors are stored and only synthesis a drug on demand when and where it’s needed, enabling even unstable or potentially toxic active drugs to be delivered in a stable and safe form. (Image courtesy of Jitka Čejková.)

Living Cell Chemical RobotSemipermeable Membrane

Plasma Membrane

Golgi ApparatusVesicle

Mitochondrion Endoplasmic Reticulum

IysosomeRibosomes Nucleus

Cytoplasm

Flagellum

Internal Compartments

FIGURE S2 The thermoresponsive microcapsules that form the bodies of chemical robots. (Photo courtesy of Jitka Čejková.)

Heating Cooling46 °C

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FIGURE S3 A scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of the surface (or skin) of a chemical robot covered by SiO2 nanoparticles to enhance stability and control adhesion. (Photo courtesy of Jitka Čejková.)

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16 IEEE PULSE ▼ MARCH/APRIL 2011

this is an ex vivo application, clinical trials are not needed, and this

could be commercialized relatively quickly.“

In the longer term, Štěpánek envisages his chemical robots

being used for the treatment of distributed cancers such as

leukemia. Unlike presently used medicines, chemical robots do

not need to carry the active drug in its final form. Instead, they

can carry its molecular precursors in separate internal reservoirs

and only synthesis the drug on demand when and where it’s

needed, enabling even unstable or potentially toxic active drugs

to be delivered in a stable and safe form. “Our robots can be used

to deliver small, but targeted, amounts of chemotherapy directly

to tumors, even the small ones,” says Štěpánek. “Our robots can

be designed to adhere to cancer cells and therefore give a more

gentle, yet effective, treatment.“

Growing Bones

Principal Investigator: Prof. Fergal O’Brien

Country: Ireland

Grant: Starting Grant, €2 million, 2009

Name of the Project: Collagen Scaffolds for Bone Regeneration:

Applied Biomaterials, Bioreactor, and Stem Cell Technology

(COLLREGEN)

Prof. Fergal O’Brien and his colleagues at the Royal College of

Surgeon in Dublin, Ireland, are combining gene therapy, stem cells

technologies, and bioreactor technology for the development of

bone-graft substitute biomaterials (Figure S4).

“Our project is different because we want to grow various tissues

on the same scaffold,” explains O’Brien. “We are also working with

some innovative scaffold material.“

The group has developed a biomimetic scaffold by

incorporating osteoinductive hydroxyapatite (HA) particles into a

highly porous and extremely biocompatible collagen-based

scaffold. The resultant scaffold shows increased stiffness, high

biological activity, improved mechanical characteristics, and

increased pore interconnectivity when compared with other

scaffold technologies.

“We have also been looking at how a body responds to

scaffolds and engineered products,” says O’Brien. “We found some

surprising results when we evaluated scaffolds that had been

cultured with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and compared them

with cell-free scaffolds. The results demonstrate that the cell-free

scaffolds showed excellent healing relative to the empty defect

controls and, somewhat surprisingly, to the tissue-engineered

(MSC-seeded) constructs.“

O’Brien says that progress has been faster than expected, in

particular, in the area of gene therapy. His group has developed an

in-house nano-HA synthesis method, and these particles have been

incorporated into the collagen-based scaffolds used in his group to

strengthen them and improve their bone-forming capability.

However, recent work has demonstrated the potential of using these

particles to act as nonviral vectors for gene therapy and has

developed a gene-activated scaffold. The current focus is to engineer

both blood vessels and bone on the same scaffold to facilitate

improved vascularization and, therefore, bone healing. Although the

primary focus of his group is on bone repair, the strategies being

developed also have a potential in any area where a lack of

vascularity is a problem, e.g., wound healing or diabetic ischemia.

FIGURE S4 Microvessel morphogenesis in a 3-D scaffold. This image demonstrates in vitro microblood vessel formation through a coculture of endothelial and MSCs on a porous col-lagen–glycosaminoglycan scaffold developed for tissue engi-neering. Cell-seeded constructs were labeled with AlexaFluor 488 Phalloidin (which stains the cell cytoskeleton green) and diamidino-phenyl indole (DAPI) (which stains the cell nucleus purple) and viewed using a 3-D multiphoton confo-cal fluorescence microscopy. The cell cocultures have formed an organized microvessel network that was able to navigate its way through the porous structure of the scaffolds. [Photo courtesy of Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI).]

However, perhaps the most stress-ful part of the application procedure was the interview in Brussels, which all Starting Grant applicants must attend. “That was nerve-racking,” says Indiveri. “But while I found it difficult, I had faith that, if I failed, it would not be because of politics or bureaucracy, but because of the

underlying science. I get the im-pression that the ERC is not run by bureaucrats but rather by scientists looking for excellence.”

All Starting Grant applicants who pass the first stage of the ap-plications process get invited to an interview with one of the panels in the ERC that make the funding

“Learn to make the description of your problem exciting and clear also for

nonexperts. Show how you are the best person to solve the problem and why

now is the best time to do it.”—Giacomo Indiveri

MARCH/APRIL 2011 ▼ IEEE PULSE 17

Clever Computers

Principal Investigator: Giacomo Indiveri

Country: Switzerland

Grant: Starting Grant, €1.5 million, 2010

Name of the Project: Neuromorphic Processors: Event-Based

VLSI Models of Cortical Circuits for Brain-Inspired Computation

(neuroP)

Dr. Giacomo Indiveri and his colleagues at the Institute of

Neuroinformatics (INI) aim to build a system that uses hybrid

digital/analog chips and can carry out simple recognition tasks.

“The system will include neural processing chips connected to

visual and auditory sensors and will not need a computer,” explains

Indiveri. “It will be able to behave and make decision in a similar

way to the animal brain.”

The INI is a unique research institute where doctors, biol-

ogists, and other life scientists work alongside electronics

engineers, physicists, and mechanical engineers to develop novel

systems. “Our project will combine new ideas with concepts that

have been around for some years in neuroscience but

developing the brain-inspired technology to implement them

and bring them all together,” says Indiveri. “By combining

neuroscience, mathematics, computer-science, and engineering,

we want to understand how large-scale artificial neural networks

and real-time sensory motor systems implemented in very large-

scale integration (VLSI) technology can be used to perform

general-purpose computation.“

Indiveri and his colleagues plan to study the properties of

neural circuits in the neocortex, model their coding strategies

and spike-driven learning mechanisms using biophysically

realistic spiking neural networks, and implement them using

hybrid analog digital VLSI circuits (Figure S5).

“We hope the project will further our understanding of how the

cortex works and then enable us to apply this knowledge to

develop a methodology for building hardware neural networks,”

says Indiveri. “Our ultimate aim is to develop both the technology

and a programming language for configuring VLSI-neural

networks, just like programming languages for programming

silicon chips exist today.“

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FIGURE S5 Detailed biophysical models of cortical circuits are derived from neuroscience experiments. (a) Neural net-works are simulated in software using realistic models of spiking neurons and dynamic synapses. These are mapped into analog circuits and integrated in large numbers on VLSI chips. (b) Digital input spikes derived from event-based sensors are integrated by synaptic circuits on the VLSI chips; these drive their target postsynaptic silicon neurons, which, in turn, integrate spatial inputs and generate action potentials. (c) Spikes of multiple neurons are transmitted off chip using asyn-chronous digital circuits to eventually control in real-time autonomous behaving systems. (Photo courtesy of Institute for Neuroinformatics.)

decisions. In the last funding round, 800 candidates were interviewed, and this year about 1,000 interviews are expected to be carried out. “This is a tremendous amount of work for the ERC, but we feel it is an essential part of the process,” says Martin-Hobdey. “We are looking for cer-tain qualities in a candidate that can

only be assessed once we have met them. We are looking for leadership skills and someone who has in-depth knowledge about their field.”

Prof. Fergal O’Brien from the Royal College of Surgeons in Dub-lin, Ireland, remembers his interview very well. “I was not allowed to use a PowerPoint presentation,” he says.

“Put down your dream and we will evaluate it.”

—Alejandro Martin-Hobdey

18 IEEE PULSE ▼ MARCH/APRIL 2011

Microrobots

Principal Investigator: Prof. Jürgen Hennig

Country: Germany

Grant: Advanced Grant, €2.5 million, 2008

Name of the Project: Ultrafast Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Using One-Voxel-One-Coil Acquisition (OVOC)

Prof. Jürgen Hennig and his colleagues at the University Hospital in

Freiburg, Germany, are developing ultrafast MRI for applications in

neuroscience, neurology, and oncology. The methodology used is

based on the principle of one-voxel-one-coil (OVOC) acquisition in

which the sensitive volumes of arrays containing a large number

of small receiver coils are used as a primary source of spatial

localization. “Traditional MRI is intrinsically slow, because the

image we see is produced from data that is encoded,” explains

Hennig. “Our method is much faster because the image is not

encoded first.“

In analogy to other electrophysiological techniques [such as

electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography

(MEG)], Hennig and his colleagues call their technique magnetic

resonance encephalography (MREG). Although this technique is

much faster than conventional MRI, achieving more than ten

frames per second, its resolution is limited by the number of coils

that can be crammed into the desired imaging area. In December

2010, Hennig’s group delivered a 32-coil system that can be used

on various areas of the body, such as the head, liver, and heart. “But

FIGURE S8 The basic principle of the OVOC approach. The head is covered with an array of multiple small coils. Each signal is read separately from each coil; this allows data acquisition at unlimited speed (>1 MHz). Sacrificing some image speed to improve spatial resolution within the sensitive volume of each coil allows acquisition at a still high speed (10–25 ft/s for a full brain data set) and at reasonable spatial resolution (currently around 4 mm). (Photo courtesy of UHF.)

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FIGURE S6 The result of a functional MRI (fMRI) acquisition acquired with (a) the MREG technique versus (b) a conven-tional measurement using the so-called echo planar imaging (EPI) approach. Temporal resolution of the MREG acquisition is 100 ms for 3 s of EPI. [Photo courtesy of University Hospital Freiburg (UHF).]

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FIGURE S7 Dynamic acquisition using a rotating checker-board wedge. The cortical activation is measured in real time and moves around with the stimulus. (Photo courtesy of UHF.)

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MARCH/APRIL 2011 ▼ IEEE PULSE 19

we have shown that we can fit up to 95 elements onto a system,”

says Hennig.

Because the technique is so fast, it can be used to investigate

fast physiological events in the brain (Figures S6 and S7). The

group will use the MREG for detailed quantitative measurement of

differential cortical response during activation of cortical

networks by complex stimuli. For neurological applications, the

researchers will use the very high sensitivity of the MREG to detect

arterial pulsatility to generate quantitative, three-dimensional

maps of hemodynamic function. Clinical applications for

examination of patients with stroke, ischemia, vascular disease,

and vascular pathologies will also be developed. The principles of

OVOC (Figure S8) measurements will also be applied in oncology

for measurements of fast intrinsic and stimulated physiological

events such as dynamic measurements of blood flow, tissue

permeability, and oxygenation in tumors and metastasis.

Spectroscopic OVOC measurements will also be developed to

observe a metabolic turnover.

“It was intimidating, but I got through it.” To say that he was delighted when he was told about the grant “is a mas-sive understatement,” says O’Brien. “I went for the ERC Starting Grant because I was at that stage in my ca-reer where I wanted to consolidate an already-established research group, and I knew I only had one shot at it,” he explains. He had eight years of experience after his Ph.D. degree when he applied for the grant. The ERC now offers two types of Starting Grants—early-stage researcher, for those wanting to set up a new research group, and consolidator, for those, like O’Brien, who want to consolidate an already-existing group (see “Clever Computers”). Since receiving the grant, O’Brien has noticed that it is easier to recruit good-quality students. “The ERC logo attracts good people,” he says. “Although some people are not keen on working on high-risk research as they have concerns that it might slow down their publication output.”

Like Štepánek and Indiveri, O’Brien has been pleasantly surprised by the way the ERC has handled the mechanics of applying and managing a grant. “Considering that Europe has a bad reputation regarding administration for the principal investigator (PI), it has been a pleasure working with the ERC,” says O’Brien.

The “trust the scientist” approach taken by the ERC is al-ready bearing fruit. Many of the research projects funded by the ERC are delivering ground-breaking results, often much earlier than anticipated. For example, Prof. Jürgen Hennig, from the

University Hospital in Freiburg, Germa-ny, says receiving the ERC’s Advanced Grant has meant he could progress his work earlier. “If I had wanted to ap-ply for a conventional grant from an-other agency, I would have had to put a few more years groundwork in first,” he says. “At the time of applying for the ERC Grant, I had, of course, put

in some groundwork, and I was confident about the science, but my aims were of high risk and at the limits of physics and technology. My proposal would not have been funded by other, more conservative funding bodies.” The ERC’s gamble has paid off—Hennig and his colleagues have made excellent progress in the development of an ultrafast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique (see “Microrobots”).

“This is what the ERC is all about,” says Martin-Hobdey. “Our aim is to stimulate scientific excellence by supporting and encouraging the very best, truly creative scientists, scholars, and engineers to be adventurous and take risks in their research. By challenging Europe’s brightest minds, the ERC expects that its grants will help to bring about new and unpredictable scientific and technological discoveries—the kind that can form the basis of new industries, markets, and broader social innovations of the future.”

Nadya Anscombe (www.nadya-anscombe.com) is a freelance science and technology journalist based in the United Kingdom.

“Be ambitious, different, andground-breaking.“

—Alejandro Martin-Hobdey