Frontier research often generates unexpected or new opportunities for commercial or societal application. The ERC Proof of Concept grants - funded by Horizon 2020 - aim to maximise the value of the excellent research that the ERC funds, by funding further work (i.e. activities which were not scheduled to be funded by the original ERC frontier research grant) to verify the innovation potential of ideas arising from ERC funded projects. Proof of Concept Grants are therefore on offer only to Principal Investigators whose proposals draw substantially on their ERC funded research.

All Principal Investigators in an ERC frontier research project, that is either on going or has ended (where the duration of the project fixed in the ERC Grant Agreement has ended) less than 12 months before 1 January 2018, are eligible to participate and apply for an ERC Proof of Concept Grant.

All proposals will be subject to ethics review as with proposals for the ERC's frontier research grants.

All proposals must be complete and be submitted before the relevant call deadline. Incomplete proposals may be declared ineligible (See ERC Proof of Concept Grant proposal submission and description below). The content of the proposal must relate to the objectives and to the grant type set out in the call, as defined in this work programme. A proposal will only be deemed ineligible on grounds of ‘scope’ in clear-cut cases.

The call budget is 20 million of euros. The financial contribution will be up to a maximum of 150.000 euros for a period of 18 months.

The call has three cut-off dates:

• 16 January 2018, 17:00:00 (Brussels time)
• 18 April 2018, 17:00:00 (Brussels time)
• 11 September 2018, 17:00:00 (Brussels time)

> Horizon 2020 - CORE Organic call 2016