Evaluation results - ERC Advanced Grant 2025 call

The results of the 2025 European Research Council (ERC) Advancd Grant call (call deadline 28 August 2025) were published. Advanced Grants are open to active researchers who have a track-record of significant research achievements. The Principal Investigators (PIs) should be exceptional leaders in terms of originality and significance of their research contributions.

Proposals are evaluated in 28 evaluation panels in three research domains (Physical Sciences and Engineering, Social Sciences and Humanities and Life Sciences) composed of top scientists and scholars coming from all over the world and in addition by remote referees with necessary specialised expertise (usually two to five per proposal).

Of the 3329 submitted proposals (>31% increase compared to last year’s Advanced Grant call) 319 researchers with 33 different nationalities received an ERC Advanced Grant: 96 in Life Sciences, 124 in Physical Sciences and Engineering and 99 in Social Sciences and Humanities. Beside the list of selected researchers in the ERCEA news articles more background on the evaluation results, call statistics, and several project examples are highlighted.

Since the launch of the Choose Europe initiative, which aims to attract and retain scientific talent in Europe, the ERC has opened three grant competitions in which researchers applying from outside Europe have been able to request up to an additional €2 million to support the costs of establishing a new laboratory or research team in Europe. This ERC Advanced Grants competition is the first of these three calls for which the results have been announced. Thirteen researchers currently based outside Europe (four percent of all winners) were selected for funding. Last year, four researchers based outside Europe won Advanced Grants (1.4% of successful applicants). Seven of these thirteen successful applicants made use of the special provision for researchers relocating to Europe under the Choose Europe for Science initiative and requested additional funding to establish a new laboratory and research team in Europe.

Among the 319 selected researchers are ten based at Flemish host institutions. The projects of these ten Principal Investigators (PIs) are presented in the news articles of Universiteit Gent and KU Leuven.

• Maaheen AHMED, Universiteit Gent, COPRINTS - A History of Color Through Illustrated Magazines (1890s-1950s), panel Social Sciences and Humanities 5
• Guy BOECKXSTAENS, KU Leuven, MACPAIN - Dorsal root ganglion macrophages as novel target for the treatment of chronic visceral pain, panel Life Sciences 7
• Leen DECIN, KU Leuven, SOPHIA - Shoulders of Gaints: Unveiling the Interaction Physics of Giant Binary Stars, panel Physical Sciences and Engineering 9
• Ilse DERLUYN, Universiteit Gent, TransParent - Bridging migration and family studies through the lens of transnational parenting, panel Social Sciences and Humanities 3
• Raf DEWIL, KU Leuven, STELLAR - Sense-Capture-Destroy-Regenerate: A multi-stimuli molecular strategy for autonomous removal of emerging micropollutants from wastewater, panel Physical Sciences and Engineering 8
• Judith GRUBER, KU Leuven, RECUR - Beyond Innocence, Towards Recursivity. Developing a Critical Political Theology of Coloniality, panel Social Sciences and Humanities 8
• Simon KUHN, KU Leuven, CrystalControl - Decoupling Primary and Secondary Nucleation for Pharmaceutical Crystallization, panel Physical Sciences and Engineering 8
• Johan NEYTS, KU Leuven, ANTIVIRMAP - Discovery of druggable antiviral targets across viral families through chemical probing, panel Life Sciences 6
• Geert VAN CALSTER, KU Leuven, CONJURERS - In search of a sustainable and just legal framework for divestment of toxic business activities and -assets., panel Social Sciences and Humanities 2
• Tom VAN DOORSSELAERE, KU Leuven, WHiSKi - Wave Heating in the Solar corona with Kink waves, panel Physical Sciences and Engineering 9