Portugal secures three more ERC Studentships of Concept Studentships

Portugal has secured three newProof of Concept (PoC) Studentships awarded by the European Research Council (ERC), each worth €150,000. This funding is intended to support outstanding researchers in the early stages of commercializing or applying the results of their cutting-edge research to society.

Proof of Concept -funded projects have the specific objective of transferring knowledge and introducing directionality to fundamental research and the early stages of innovation. As a Call to ERC Grantees (researchers with Studentship ), with active or recently completed projects, it allows ideas funded by the ERC to start on a path to the market or to the creation of solutions with a direct impact on society.

The projects to be developed in Portugal are:

• “Metasurface beam shapers for aerospace high-power laser links” [Highlight]: led by Marco Piccardo, from INESC-MN/IST, this is the first Proof of Concept project associated with the 2024 Starting Grant (“Space-Time and Vectorial Meta-Optics for High-Power Structured Laser-Matter Interactions”);
• “A Novel 3Rs Microphysiological Alternative Platform for Parkinson’s Disease” [ReMAP-PD]: coordinated by Cláudia Nunes Santos, NIMSB/NOVA, relates to the 2018 Starting Grant, which will be completed shortly (“Zooming in on the link between diet and brain health: how phenolic metabolites modulate brain inflammation”);
• “Metabolic Reprogramming for Neuronal Differentiation” [MetaBoost]: led by Catarina Homem, NOVA-NMS, under the 2017 Starting Grant (“Metabolic and Timed Control of Stem Cell Fate in the Developing Animal”), which takes advantage of the possibility of submitting applications to this ERC funding instrument even after the completion of her project.

These three national projects were selected in the second round of applications for Call Studentships and join three others announced in the first round.

In summary, the results of this round of ERC Proof of Concept confirm 136 projects for funding, corresponding to a success rate of approximately 34% and a European investment of €20.4 million. The projects will be developed in 18 European countries or countries associated with the Horizon Europe framework program.

According to the ERC's 2026 work program, researchers will have the opportunity to submit proposals in March and September 2026.

During the previous European funding program for research and innovation, Horizon 2020 (2014-2020), 15 projects were funded in Portugal under the ERC Proof of Concept program. As Horizon Europe enters its final two years, Portugal has now reached the milestone of 22 ERC Proof of Concept projects.

The FCT has been developing a set of innovative programs in the European landscape covering the various stages of national participation in Calls , with a significant return on investment. Within the scope of ERC-Portugal and its core programs (ERC-PT , ERC-PT , and ERC-PT ), and in less than two years, a total of 190 researchers have been supported, with an investment of €6.4 million in PRR funds, and with ERC funding of €23.1 million bearing the "fingerprint" of the ERC-Portugal Program. Also noteworthy within the scope of ERC-PT is the creation of an Annual College of Evaluators with 82 members, all former ERC evaluators, covering all scientific areas.