After more than three years at the helm of the European Research Council (ERC), Professor Jean-Pierre Bourguignon has been re-appointed, on 14 September, as President of the research institute established by the European Commission in 2007. He will remain in charge of the presidency until the end of 2019. Both Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, and Professor Klaus Bock, ERC’s Vice-President, have welcomed the news with enthusiasm, underlining that Professor Bourguignon is the right person to ensure the future success of ERC and to take the enterprise towards the next framework programme.

The decision to re-appoint Professor Bourguignon shows the will to continue working on the same path laid out in these years. As illustrated in a recent assessment, most of the ERC projects are achieving significant scientific results. The Qualitative Evaluation of Completed Projects funded by the European Research Council, published this month, highlights that high risk/high gain projects, as well as projects with a high level of interdisciplinarity, are more likely to generate positive scientific contributions. In general, 73% of the projects have been evaluated as being in the top categories, i.e. leading to a scientific breakthrough (25%) or to major scientific advance (48%). These results, which refer to projects carried out in 2016, are in line with the outcomes of a similar assessment on 2015 ERC projects, where 71% of the projects were in the top two categories. 

Re-appointment of Prof. Bourguignon  

ERC's assessment