ERCOverview & Experience

Prof. Luca Benini -DEIS

Cagliari, 29 Novembre 2012

IDEAS Programme Characteristics

� No thematic priorities (bottom up)� Frontier research� Opportunity for excellent reseachers

� At the beginning of their career (Starting)� Ramping up (Consolidator)� Well-established (Advanced)

� Excellence is highly weighted� Lots of authonomy in grant management (including portab ility)

ERC Home Page

New interactive statistics tool launched

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Menu toselectdifferentviews on thedata byFundingScheme,Call Yearand Domain

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299 282 245 245

436

271

484

50

292

3

244

2

1

9

30

292

-50

50

150

250

350

450

550

under preparation

signed

2.850 grants signed, for a total commitment of 4.58 bn€

GRANT PREPARATION

1,72 1,59

1,31 1,12

0,79 0,51

0,29

~1000~900

835579379452

-

0,20

0,40

0,60

0,80

1,00

1,20

1,40

1,60

1,80

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

in 1

.000

Mio

€

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

2000

in D

ays

Commitment creditsNo of Grants signed

+ 17%

+ 75%

+ 55%

+ 42%

+ 21% + 8%

GRANT PREPARATIONyearly evolution

GRANT PREPARATIONTime to Grant (number of calendar days from

invitation letter)

StG2011 AdG2011

PoC2011 StG2012

minimum 19 24 34 16

first 10% 55 51 51 44

first 25% 79 87 71 69

median 102 129 105

first 75% 143 182 154

first 90% 204 235 209

IDEAS Programme Characteristics

� No thematic priorities (bottom up)� Frontier research� Opportunity for excellent reseachers

� At the beginning of their career (Starting)� Ramping up (Consolidator)� Well-established (Advanced)

� Excellence is highly weighted� Lots of authonomy in grant management (including portab ility)

STG 2012 : Proposals for funding Country of Host Institution and domain

21 Countries

│

134

83 80

53

34 30 28 25 22 1913 11 8 7 6 4 4 2 2 2 1

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

UK DE FR NL CH ES IT IL SE BE DK AT FI NO PT EL IE HU PL TR SK

# P

ropo

sals

for

fund

ing

SH domain (106)

PE domain (252)

LS domain (210)

STG 2011 - 2012 : Proposals for funding by Country of Host Institution

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%U

KD

EF

R NL

CH

ES IT IL SE

BE

DK

AT FI

NO PT

EL IE HU PL

TR

SK

Host Institution Country

All countries on funding list in 2012% share 2011

% share 2012

│

│

020406080

100120140160180200

UK

FR

DE

NL

CH

ES IT IL DK

SE

BE FI

AT

NO EL IE HU PT

TR

CY

HR PL

CZ

EE LV SI

# o

f Pro

posa

Is

HI country

ERC ADG 2012 # of proposals by HI country and domain passed to Step 2

SH PE LS

ADG 2012- Proposals passing to Step 2 by HI country and domain

ADG 2011-2012 Step 2 PE domain – Distribution of funds

UK FR CH DE NL ES DK IT IL BE SE EL PT AT FI NO SI HU LV CZ IE PL

2011 19,2 13,0 11,1 18,2 8,0% 2,3% 4,6% 5,0% 2,1% 2,6% 3,2% 1,9% 3,4% 2,1% 0,9% 0,4% 0,7% 0,6% 0,7%2012 29,4 16,1 8,8% 8,1% 7,5% 5,7% 4,2% 4,0% 3,0% 2,5% 2,3% 1,5% 1,5% 1,5% 0,9% 0,8% 0,8% 0,6% 0,5% 0,2%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

ERC ADG 2011-2012 PE domain- Distribution of funds by Host Institution Country

All countries on funding list in 2012

Synergy 2012 corresponding HIs and partners distribution at submission

c

142

97

74

63

58

41

31

26 25 23

18

13 13 11 10 9 8 8 7 7 5 4 4 4 2 2 2 1 1

181

149

93

112

98

46

55

22

37

19

30

24 21 19 16 14 11

1

8 9

3 5 9 6 2 3 4 1 2 1 1 1

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

IT UK

FR

DE

ES

SE

NL

EL

PT FI

CH

BE IL AT

NO

DK

CZ

RO

CY IE TR

HU PL SI

BG SK

RS

HR IS EE LT LU AL

# of

par

tner

s

Country

Corresponding HI country

Partner Country

│

SYNERGY 2012-Succesful HI countries – at each step

05

10152025303540455055

UK

(24

6)

DE

(17

5)

FR

(16

7)

NL

(86)

IL (

34)

IT (

323)

SE

(87

)

AT

(30

)

CH

(48

)

ES

(15

6)

DK

(23

)

BE

(37

)

FI (

42)

HU

(9)

EE

(2)

IS (

1)

NO

(26

)

PT

(62)

# O

F P

RO

PO

SA

LS

HI COUNTRIES

Sucessful HIs at Step 1A

Sucessful HIs at Step 1B

Sucessful HI at Step 2A

� Deciding to try� Need to have time (make sure you get an empty slot in your calendar)� Prepare for it : read a lot to widen you views ���� depth you have, but do you

have breadth?� Are you mature? You are convinced you know the target ar ea very deeply?

Have you supervised 5-10 PhDs in the area?� Are you visible? If people in the panel know you or if t hey can find out

about you in a few minutes (one call, one google search), that’s ok� Have an idea YOU are really excited about? (not the mon ey ☺☺☺☺)

� Effort needed to prepare a competitive proposal� Focus, focus, focus: take two weeks 100% for writeup only – no distractions� Your junior collaborators can help (bibliography, fi gures), but you must

write the whole thing� No cut and paste – it’s 15 pages, it must really flow ni cely

…

Project preparationGeneral notes

The Principal Investigator

� Space is very limited: chose carefully!� Prefer quality to volume: papers with high ref. cou nt, possibly

highly technical� Highlight only major accomplishments – academic, ind ustrial,

prizes� Be quantitative – h-index, citation count (publish-o r-perish/google

scholar, microsoft academic search, …)� Be comparative – quote rankings, if possible � Focus: quote your best research related to the topi c of the project� Cover all aspects: scientific excellence, impact (a cademic,

industrial, social) of research, capability to attr act funding, excellence in education, team leadership

� Make sure that 10-years derivative is positive� Highlight cooperation and international research ne twork

(academic, industrial)

Poposal contentsome advice

� Highly technical but understandable. Proposal is re viewed by 7 people…. Cannot assume that they are all specialists in your field.

� Spend a lot of time in making sure that impact is r eally understandable (and exciting)

� Short is beautiful – do not write too much� Be ambitious, but credible (do not promise too muc h)� Link key deliverables to your track record to convi nce reviewers

that you can deliver� Give room to science (more than in e.g. FP7 coopera tion

projects)� 5 years is a long time – don’t over-specify

ERC AdG-MULTITHERMAN at a Glance� Funding 2.48M€ (single partner), started Apr. 1st, 2012 –

Duration: 60 months� Multidisciplinary contributions from Artificial Intelligence &

Optimization and Control Theory� Objective: Multi-scale Thermal Management of Computing

Systems

Integrate thermal-aware platform design, thermal control with workload management and shaping in a distributed, multi-scale strategy, to achieve the highest performance compatible with temperature constraints. The development of a synergistic performance, power and thermal management strategy requires major breakthrough in several areas, namely architectures, run-time systems, resource management middleware, code optimization tools and programming models. Bring together techniques from computer architecture and circuits, control theory, combinatorial and continuous optimization, statistical model-building and artificial intelligence. Results will be demonstrated on of physical and virtual prototypes, proving practical applicability and relevance for industrial applications.

� Pluses� Very little paperwork compared with other FP7 schemes� Lots of freedom� Interaction with PO is quite immediate and easy

� complessità/ difficoltà/ � EU side: so far so good!� UNIBO side: hard to scale up – make sure you make your

department/school immediately aware!� Things take time in Italy – perhaps too much…

…

IDEAS Advanced Grant la gestione di un progetto ERC

Grazie dell’attenzione!