Nearly 5,000 proposals were submitted this year, highlighting ‘Europe’s growing appeal for frontier research’, said the EU’s start-ups commissioner.

€705m has been allocated to 421 early-career researchers of more than 50 different nationalities for research work in affiliated countries under the European Research Council’s (ERC) Starting Grants initiative.

Five awards collectively worth multiple millions of euros were given to experts at Irish organisations for their research into innovative drug development, and health and safety.

A record 4,807 grant proposals were submitted for 2026 – up 22pc since last year. Only 8.8pc of the applicants were successful in receiving funding. 169 US-based researchers applied, with 20 successful awardees now gearing up to move to Europe to continue their work.

A Starting Grant provides up to €1.5m over a period of up to five years. As part of the ‘Choose Europe’ initiative that aims to attract and retain global scientific talent, the ERC can award up to €2m for applicants moving to Europe.

“Their decision [to move] reflects Europe’s growing appeal for frontier research and is an encouraging sign that the EU’s Choose Europe initiative is helping to attract the next generation of scientific talent while reinforcing Europe’s position as a destination of choice for excellent research,” said Ekaterina Zaharieva, the European commissioner for start-ups, research and innovation.

The selected projects will cover a broad spectrum of research fields from life sciences and engineering to social sciences and humanities, according to the ERC.

Two researchers from Trinity College Dublin, Dr Casey Platnich and Dr Gabriela Kronemberger, have each received €1.5m for their five-year projects and to build their own research teams.

Platnich, an assistant professor based in Trinity’s School of Chemistry, will lead a project called ‘Snaprr’, which aims to transform how scientists detect and understand RNA viruses.

Current technologies often miss important details about viral chemistry that can tell us how pathogens spread, evolve and respond to medicines, the university said. Snappr aims to develop a new way to study viral RNA using tiny nanopore sensors roughly a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair.

Meanwhile, Dr Kronemberger, based in the university’s School of Engineering, will lead ‘Smart-Meniscus’, a project integrating 3D bioprinting, stem-cell engineering and gene delivery technologies to develop an approach that targets the structural, cellular and immunological challenges of meniscus repair.

“Becoming an ERC awardee is the greatest honour of my career,” said Kronemberger.

“I am deeply grateful to the ERC for this opportunity, which comes at a pivotal moment for me, and I am excited to begin this project, which will allow me to build my own research team and pursue ambitious new directions in tissue engineering to address a critical, unmet need.”

University College Dublin (UCD) researchers also won two grants collectively worth nearly €4m.

Dr Alan Seltzer from the UCD School of Earth Sciences has received nearly €2.5m to study naturally occurring gases dissolved in groundwater behaving like “chemical fingerprints” in order to hopefully understand how groundwater systems have responded to environmental change over much longer timescales than direct observations would otherwise allow.

€1.5m has been allocated to Dr Seungkuk Ahn from UCD’s Charles Institute of Dermatology for a project called ‘Design-ECM’, which will investigate species-driven dimorphism – or sex-specific characteristics – in biomaterials and cell biology across materials science, bioengineering and nanobiotechnology.

Success in this project could reshape the design of future preclinical models to “seriously reckon with species and sex of biomaterials and cells”, UCD said. Meanwhile, Dr Alan Costello from the National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training has won a fifth grant award for Ireland.

“The creativity and ambition of this new generation of grantees are inspiring. Over 50 nationalities are represented amongst these researchers who will carry out their work across Europe,” ERC president Prof Maria Leptin said.

“ERC Starting Grants will give them independence and support early on in their careers, needed for them to push scientific boundaries. This is the best investment we can make to further strengthen our research base and Europe’s future.”

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