17 ERC Starting Grants for Max Planck

This puts the MPG at the top of the European ranking

In this year’s round of ERC Starting Grants, the Max Planck Society secured 17 awards. With 56 applications submitted, this corresponds to a success rate of 30 percent. This result continues the Society’s strong track record from previous years and once again confirms its leading position in the European competition.

In the European comparison, the Max Planck Society is right at the top: with 17 grants, it shares first place with the French CNRS. They are followed by the University of Oxford (12 grants), the University of Amsterdam (10 grants), ETH Zurich (9 grants), and the Helmholtz Association (8 grants). Altogether, the ERC received 3,928 applications, of which 478 were approved (12 percent). Germany leads the European ranking with 99 grants, followed by the United Kingdom (60), the Netherlands (44), and France (41).

Within the Max Planck Society, the Humanities and Social Sciences Section (GSHS) stood out with particularly high numbers: 6 out of 13 applications were successful – a peak rate of 46 percent. In the Biology and Medicine Section (BMS), 4 out of 15 applications were approved (27 percent), and in the Chemistry, Physics and Technology Section (CPTS), 7 out of 28 (25 percent).

This year’s ERC Starting Grants for Max Planck researchers go to:

Chemistry, Physics & Technology Section

• Anna De Graaff – Max Planck Institute for Astronomy

• Christian Renggli – Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research

• Mariya Toneva – Max Planck Institute for Software Systems

• Rahul Trivedi – Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics

• Alexander Wietek – Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems

• Alexander Winkler – Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry

• Guanqui Qiu – Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung

Humanities and Social Sciences Section

• Ugofilippo Basellini – Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

• Arthur Kocher – Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

• Marília Nepomuceno – Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

• Hannah Sarvasy – Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics

• Oleg Sobchuk – Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

• Sofie Valk – Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences

Biology & Medicine Section

• Can Aztekin – Friedrich Miescher Laboratory

• Valentin Flury – Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics

• Juliane Glaser – Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics

• Martina Preiner – Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology

The ERC Starting Grants provide an average of 1.5 million euros over five years. They enable early-career researchers to build their own teams and pursue new ideas independently.