Success Story with ERC Grantee Thomas Ward
ERC Advanced Grants are for established researchers with a track-record of significant research achievements. Projects can cover any topic of research and scholarship and are evaluated by subject specific plans. There is one call per year with the next deadline on 27th August. A project budget of up to € 2.5 million may be requested for a period of 5 years. (pro rata for projects of shorter duration) plus additional budget of €1 million for justified reasons.
Thinking of applying and want to know more? Please don’t hesitate to contact us for further details about how to prepare a strong proposal.
Last year, Professors Alex Scheir from the Biozentrum, Thomas Ward and Oliver Wenger from the Chemistry Department were all awarded one of the prestigious ERC Advanced Grants. We spoke to Thomas Ward about his advice for grant writing and experience as an ERC panel member.
What motivated you to apply for an ERC Advanced Grant rather than a different funding scheme?
I wanted to do something totally different from what I’ve done so far, and I thought I would just give it a go, if it’s financed, great, and if not, at least I tried. I think it was particularly important that it’s a very different project to my previous ERC Advanced Grant.
It was also good timing, we had a major breakthrough in the lab on another project, which was attracting a lot of interest and has since been published. I felt that it was time for me to move on to another challenge.
What was the biggest challenge in applying for an ERC Grant?
I think the biggest challenge is to propose something new. Applying for an ERC Grant means taking a significant scientific leap. You have to be creating the next frontier. Of course, it’s also important to show the evaluation panel that you are the right person to carry-out the grant and that it’s doable. The ERC is all about bringing great ideas to life. You need a contingency plan, and the riskier the project is, the better the contingency plan needs to be. For this current grant, I proposed something extremely risky, so I needed a rock solid plan B and to be very convincing during the interview.
You have also been a panel member and panel chair for ERC Starting Grants. What advice would you have for young scientists who are considering and or preparing for an ERC Grant?
My main piece of advice is: “Do not assume that the evaluators are experts”. In fact, assume the opposite. Yes, ERC panel members are very experienced, but also very specialized and most likely not in your particular topic. You should be proposing something new and you need to explain this to the panel. Evaluators want to learn something from your proposal. After reading your proposal, they should be thinking “cool idea, I want to learn more”, “I’d like to see this proposal being funded”. Also, keep in mind that an evaluator receives about 40 applications for the first step and has, on average, 1 hour per proposal. If they don’t understand the idea, they will move on to the next proposal. Assist them as much as possible by creating an easy-to-read proposal with a clear research strategy and implementation plan.
For the younger colleagues the intellectual independence is important. Your experience is shaped by your PhD and postdoc phases, but for an ERC application and your career in general, it is important that you develop an idea that is truly your own. In the CV and past publications, it’s important to objectively outline the author’s contributions. The evaluators need to know how you have contributed to your published work and to what extent your new project differs from your previous work. The extent to which the project departs from the applicant’s previous work is perhaps the most critical element of ERC evaluation, particularly for Starting Grants.
How did you prepare yourself for the ERC application?
This is very individual, and you’ve got to do what’s right for you. I started thinking about the idea about 18 months prior to the deadline. When I start writing, I need to shut myself off from day-to-day business and focus entirely on the proposal. I need an “empty to-do list” before I can even begin. Some colleagues prefer to work one day a week over a longer period. For an ERC Advanced Grant, I need about 2 months near full-time writing. The deadline in August is perfect for me, as it is a quiet time regarding teaching, etc., and I can really focus on writing the grant.
For this grant, I started writing for a previous deadline and then realized that there was a step missing on the scientific side. I decided to rethink the proposal, and the missing piece of the puzzle actually came to me during an MSc lecture: Metals in Biology. This highlights how teaching is intertwined with our research and how important this is for our daily research lives. As a more senior researcher, it is challenging to find time to think about new research directions; we have so many additional administrative tasks these days that I have to book time on my agenda for my research day. Reserving time in your agenda for grant writing is one of the key steps of preparation.
Oliver Wenger, Department of Chemistry
At first glance, the overall evaluation process is clearly comprised of objective evaluations. In my case, this included eight external review reports and an assessment by the panel. However, in such a competitive process with success rates near or below 10%, seemingly minor details can have a significant impact. In this context, I speculate that I might not have received the ERC ADG if I had not built trust within the community through my extensive conference travel over the past 10 years.
The ERC has 28 evaluation panels. How important is the choice of panel when preparing?
In the end, it’s the ERC, or to be more precise, the panel chair, who decides which panel your proposal is allocated to. I believe it is important to think carefully about your audience when writing an ERC proposal. This means taking the time to select the right keywords and panel for your submission. Ideally, the panel members and external reviewers evaluating your proposal should speak the same scientific language as you. My own research lies at the chemistry–biology interface, but I clearly speak chemistry. Statistically, proposals evaluated by two panels tend to have a lower success rate than those evaluated by a single panel.
