The Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca (AGAUR) has compiled the impact that Catalan Research has had since 2007 until 2019 in the European Research Council (ERC) in the report "European Research Council - Participació catalana". This time period includes the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), that ran from 2007 to 2013, and the Horizon 2020 Program, covering from 2014 to 2020.
Their data show the importance these programs have in European research, with 75 % of the granted research projects becoming scientific advancements with a high impact in society, and 50 % having a clear effect in economics or an impact in political decisions.
Catalan Research of Excellence
The data AGAUR provides shows that Catalan Research Institutions have received 3.2 % (a total of 369 grants) of all ERC grants in the European Research Area. Proof of Concept (PoC) grants are particularly noteworthy, since Catalan Research Institutions received 6.9 % of all ERC PoC grants.
The total of all the Catalan Research Institutions, including Research Centers and Universities, accounts for 53 % of all Spanish ERCs, and is in 4th position in the ranking of ERC Grants per million habitants. A 44 % of these grants were in the field of Physics and Engineering (PE), 26 % on Life Sciences (LS), and a 30 % in Social Sciences (SH).
The European Research Council has been giving these grants for 13 years, first within the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7), and then within the Horizon 2020 Programme:
ICMAB, the 10th Center with more ERC Grants in Catalunya
There are 45 different institutions in Catalunya that have received at least one ERC grant. With 12 total grants, ICMAB is the 10th Institution with most grants received, and the 7th Research Center, the first from the CSIC centers in Catalunya. As you can see in the figure, three universities are on the top 10: the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the Universitat de Barcelona (UB).
With 3.3 % of all Catalan ERCs, ICMAB is one of the 16 Centers that accumulate the 82 % of all ERCs in Catalunya. If we look into our main area of research within ERC "Physical Sciences and Engineering", ICMAB has 7,4 % of all Catalan ERC.
ICMAB is also the CSIC Center that has more ERCs in Catalunya, with 41 % of all CSIC-CAT grants. Regarding the whole CSIC centers, ICMAB accounts for 14.5 % of the ERC grants on-going in 2019, and 26,5 % of the ERC grants in the CSIC centers forming the global area "Materia" (Matter).
AGAUR data does not include ICMAB’s most recent Proof Of Concept (PoC) ERC Grant, given to Mariano Campoy-Quiles, researcher at the Nanostructured Materials for Optoelectronics and Energy Harvesting (NANOPTO) group, working to advance in the development of organic thermoelectric generators to power low-cost sensors for vineyards. You can learn more about it in this interview:
ORGEVINE is the latest in ICMAB’s history of ERC projects, which starts in 2012 with the first ERC awarded to Marta Mas-Torrent, and followed by researchers Agustín Mihi, Mariano Campoy-Quiles, Teresa Puig, Alexandre Ponrouch, Massimiliano Stengel, Núria Aliaga, Gerard Tobias, Martí Gich and Can Onur Avci. Below you can see our ERC timeline, and here you can know more about our ERC projects.
The AGAUR study includes data on gender, showing only 19 % of all ERC grants in Catalunya are given to women. This average is far under ICMAB’s distribution, where 41,6 % of ERC are led by women:
More information: