From healthy lives to sustainable cities, from food security to equal societies – frontier research is often credited to have the potential to produce paradigm-shifting discoveries with economic, societal and policy impacts.
With almost 10,000 researchers supported all over Europe, the European Research Council (ERC) is a key component of the EU’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.
But while the main objective of frontier research is to fund multi-disciplinary, pioneering projects allowing scientists to follow their curiosity, critics of the concept consider there should be more control over the research process to avoid ethical drawbacks.