Canadians encouraged to compete for larger share of European research grants

Canada first stop in "Go Global" campaign

By Debbie Lawes

Canadian researchers fearing a new era of austerity budgets in this country— particularly for basic research — may want to turn their sights overseas where a global campaign is promoting the millions of euros available to North American researchers. While about €80 billion will be up for grabs as part of the European Union's proposed new research framework program, the more aggressive recruiting effort is coming from the lesser known European Research Council.

The ERC recently wrapped up a cross-Canada tour showing how researchers here can tap into discovery-type grants of up to €3.5 million (Cdn $4.5 million) over five years, enough to support a team of five plus a principal investigator.

"These are individual grants and researchers can do what they want with that money," ERC secretary general Donald Dingwell told journalists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference February 19 in Vancouver. There are only two caveats: that principal investigators spend 50% of their time in one of the 27 EU member states or associated countries, and that the grant be administered through a European research institution or company.

"They can have members of their team who are parked here in Canada for 12 months of the year doing the relevant research as long as they're paid through Europe," added Dingwell, who acknowledged that awareness of the program is low outside of Europe.

The two-year "ERC Go Global" campaign is the brainchild of Canadian-born Dingwell, who moved into the council's top job in September. He made attracting more non-European researchers a top priority.

"(ERC grants are) open for anyone in the world," he said. "We want to show that the EU is attractive ... to scholars who can be judged by a council of peers to (have research) worth doing."

The ERC launched its international campaign in Canada, visiting research funding organizations as well as universities in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and St. John's. The road show travels next to South Africa, Latin America, Russia and Ukraine, Asia, Mexico and the United States.

One of those meetings was with Dr Peter Lewis, associate VP research and Judith Chadwick, assistant VP research services at the Univ of Toronto. Lewis says the main attraction of these grants is their size and, unlike many awards in Canada, they don't require matching contributions.

"You apply, you're judged to be excellent and you get the money. Period," says Lewis. "Whereas here, you have provincial, philanthropic, company matches."

Another advantage, he adds, is that the funding supports frontier research, whether basic or applied. Increasingly Canada and other countries are putting a greater emphasis on applied research with commercial potential.

"The difference with the ERC grants is that they fund excellent research with no strings attached," says Lewis.

Launched in 2007 as the EU's "blue sky" funding agency, the ERC has a 2013 grant budget of €1.8 billion, up from €300 million in 2007, and its funding is expected to double under the Horizon 2020 framework program beginning in 2014. Horizon 2020's proposed €80 billion budget still requires approval from the European Parliament, council of ministers and the member states, but Dingwell is optimistic it will be passed, despite Europe's economic crisis.

"We have received enormous signals of support from the same politicians who are proposing budget cuts (in Europe) … We also have a tremendous groundswell of support of the scientific and researcher community across Europe," says Dingwell, a volcanologist who left Canada in 1986 to work in Germany.

The ERC's goal is to boost the number of non-European researchers it supports to more than 500. Currently only 100 of its 2,600 grant recipients are from outside of Europe — and just 13 of those are from Canada. Dingwell wants to see the number of non-European recipients at least doubled, which could mean up to $45 million in new funding for Canadian scientists.

One of those current grantees is archeologist Dr Nicole Boivin, a Univ of Calgary alumnus who moved to the Univ of Oxford after receiving a lavish — by Canadian standards — €1.2-million new investigator grant from ERC. Speaking to reporters at the AAAS, Boivin said she was drawn by the program's emphasis on multidisciplinary research, its tolerance for risk and the large grants available to new researchers.

"A lot of us put in proposals for projects that we already know, in many ways, what the answers are. (Canadian funders) want us to play it safe," she said. "The ERC is very different. It's looking for innovative ideas and risk is OK."

Lewis, whose U of T job is expanding to include global research partnerships, says there is little funding available in Canada for international collaborations, adding he would like to see programs similar to the ERC established in North America. "We need some reciprocity so we could get more European scientists working here."

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