On Tuesday, 8th of October, the Korea-EU Research Centre (KERC, Director General Dr. Woohyun CHO) hosted the first webinar about European Research Council (ERC) grants for Korea. The event was co-hosted by EURAXESS Korea (representative Dr. Tomasz Wierzbowski).
It was the first official ERC webinar for Korean researchers that is fully customized for Korean audiences. Even though there remains a barrier for Korea-based researchers to the ERC grants, such as finding a host institute in Europe, the webinar drew a lot of interest from Korean researchers with 190 registrations. Two third of registrants were from Korea, and the other one-third were from Korean researchers based in European institutions. Most of registrants were professor at university (including full-time, associate and assistant professor).
The webinar was divided in three parts: Information session, Grantee session and Support session.
Prof. Jose Labastida (Head of Unit at the ERC Executive Agency) and Dr. Hyong-Ha KIM (NCP for ERC and a Principal Research Scientist at KRISS) jointly organized info-session, introducing ERC grants and explaining Korean participation history and related statistics.
Two Korean ERC grantees were invited to share their success story and application experience. The case of Prof. Woojin KWON (Department of Physics) demonstrated a unique case of a Korean researcher receiving an ERC grant with University of Milan in Italy, while keeping his position as an assistant professor at UNIST in Korea. He emphasized that this particularity has enabled him to contribute further to international collaboration and research mobility between Korean and Europe, for example, by bringing researchers from his home institutions to Italy. On the other hand, Prof. Chirlmin JOO (Professor of Single Molecule Biophysics, TU Delft), who was awarded ERC Starting, Consolidator and Proof of Concept grant, presented how one can progress and develop research ideas throughout the different steps of ERC funding, explaining his next step for Advanced grant.
Finally, in the support session, Sang-Ha WOO, Head of newly established ‘Horizon Europe Taskforce’ within the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), introduced Korea-EU Research Cooperation Promotion Program which supports Korean researchers on their preparation for their future potential joint research within Horizon Europe Pillar 1 and 2. In addition to that, Dr. Tomasz Wierzbowski informed about EURAXESS platform and its support for Korean researchers who want to access to Europe.
What’s next?
Through this first webinar, we have confirmed that there is demand for ERC grants among Korean researchers, whether they are based in Korea or Europe. We are on our way to further develop the support for Korean researcher on their successful application journey for ERC funding. It can include ERC application guide book coupled with Korean success stories, and webinar on ERC with more detailed explanation on application process including proposal writing demonstration session.
