Catalan projects receive 42% of European Research Council grants to Spain
42% of the grants the European Research Council (ERC) gave on Wednesday to researchers in Spain will benefit Catalan academics. Specifically, ten of the 24 scholarship holders are working in Catalonia: three belong to the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), two to the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and one to the University of Barcelona (UB). The four remaining academics are involved in projects from other institutions such as the Centre for Genomic Regulation and the Institute of Photonic Sciences. This year, the ERC allocated a total of €605 million through its funding programme and evaluated 2,274 research proposals, of which 13.8% have been selected. The majority of the research initiatives are devoted to engineering and physics and the winners of the grants are from 39 different nationalities.