Prague, July 28 (CTK) – Five researchers from the Czech Republic received the prestigious grants of the European Research Council (ERC) this year, which has been the best result the country has achieved since 2008, according to the assessment the ERC released on its website last week.
Two of the grants were allocated to Charles University in Prague, while Brno’s Masaryk University as well as the Science Academy’s (AV) Biological Centre and its Molecular Genetics Institute received one each.
Those are “Starting Grants” that support selected projects for up to five years.
About 30 applicants were seeking them in the Czech Republic, while ten were shortlisted for the second round. Consequently, one-sixth of the Czech applicants won the ERC grants, which is considerably more than in the past years.
The average success rate of applications for ERC grants is almost 13 percent, the ERC says on its website.
The ERC has given 8600 grants since its foundation in 2007. Its council has 22 members.
One of them is prominent Czech physicist Tomas Jungwirth who told CTK that the success rate of scientists from the Czech Republic was a great piece of news. Jungwirth also said previously that these grants were indicators of the science’s top level.
The Czech Republic was not very successful in gaining the ERC grants in the past, though it fared quite well among the new EU member states.
Czech projects have only won about 30 ERC grants since 2008, while West European countries have been far more successful.
As far as Charles University is concerned, the ERC grants will go to the teams of Matyas Fendrych, from the Faculty of Science, and the team of Ondrej Pejcha, from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, this year.
Katerina Sam, from the AV’s Biological Centre, studying the food relations between insect and birds, has also succeeded in winning the ERC grant. The other Czech winners are Marek Mraz from Masaryk University, who focuses on a severe form of leukaemia, and Ondrej Stepanek from the AV’s Institute of Molecular Genetics, looking into some aspects of the immunity system.
The ERC grant means support of up to 1.5 million euros for five years. This year, the grants will be sent to 403 scientists from 22 countries, while Germany with 73 grants was the most successful one, followed by Italy (42) and France (33).
The ERC is also allocating other types of grants, but the decision on them has not been made yet.
