Obtaining an ERC Starting Grant

The European Research Council (ERC) is the continent's pre-eminent source of competitive funding to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields. The ERC was designed by researchers and its funding decisions are made by disciplinary peers solely on the basis of scientific excellence. This 'bottom-up' approach allows the scientists themselves to identify new opportunities in any field of research, rather than being led by priorities set by politicians. Grants are awarded through open competition to projects headed by starting and established researchers who are working or moving to work in Europe.

In 2014, I discovered that the scattering of energetic electrons can cause silicon impurities to move through the graphene lattice, revealing a potential for atomically precise manipulation using the focused electron probe. To develop this into a practical technique, improvements in the description of beam-induced displacements, advances in heteroatom implantation, and a concerted effort towards the automation of manipulations were required in a multidisciplinary effort combining computational and experimental work in a custom-modified scanning transmission electron microscope electron microscope.

In this talk, I will describe my journey from designing a high-risk, high-reward frontier research project to writing a successful proposal and presenting it to my peers in a grant interview. After successfully receiving the grant and completing the grant negotiations, I started my project in October 2017. The generous support of 1.5 million euros over five years from an ERC Starting Grant allowed me to start my own research group devoted to this topic, and gave ample visibility within my university. This and the fact the grant is tied to my person and transferrable to another institution directly contributed to the tenure track position I received at the University of Vienna in 2019.