Back in 2007, the European Commission established the European Research Council (ERC) with the mission to encourage excellent frontier research in Europe through competitive funding, supporting top researchers across all fields and of any nationality. Since then, the ERC has had a considerable impact on the European research landscape. In almost ten years, it has funded almost 7,000 researchers and thereby supporting more than 40,000 team members. Its support has been acknowledged in close to 100,000 international scientific journal articles.

In 2017 the ERC makes its 10th anniversary, an important milestone in making Europe a global centre of excellence in research. Fundación Madri+d para el conocimiento organizes a celebration in Madrid next june 12, where our two ERC grantees (Prof. Javier Llorca and Dr. Juan José Vilatela) will play an active role.