Departing from the IMF, European Research Council has released the list of 2012 winning projects that obtained financial support from the Council under the ERC Starting Grant results, totaling €800 million. The link to the list is here.
Now, a quick run through the headline results:
- Ireland scored 4 projects (2 each for TCD and UCD)
- Portugal (not a country we in Ireland usually associate with being the Land of Scholars) scored same as Ireland
- Israel scored 24 projects
- Austria 9 projects
- Belgium 19 projects
- Switzerland 33 projects
- Netherlands scored 51 project
- Finland 8 projects
- Denmark 13 projects
- Sweden 22 projects
- And to add insult to our injury: University of Bristol (UK) and University of Edinburgh scored 5 projects each (more than the entire country of Ireland), while University of Warwick 4 projects (same as Ireland as a whole)
- University College London scored 16 projects
- In some consolation, powerhouse of knowledge, Northern Ireland, scored none
Here's a handy chart from ERC:
But wait, it gets worse. When broken down by nationality of grantees, Ireland has 7 Irish nationals granted research proposals:
Which includes more Irish national academics working ABROAD than in Ireland:
And, among the researchers who got grants in Ireland, there are a number of non-nationals:
You can check the above in here.
So that strategy on funding and managing research in Ireland - it is clearly working marvels... oh, and do you now think Irish Universities poor rankings have nothing to do with real world outcomes?..
