Visit to Dublin of European Research Council President, Professor Maria Leptin

President of the European Research Council (ERC), Professor Maria Leptin, is in Dublin today for a series of engagements with research and political leaders, chief among them a keynote address at an ERC Impact Forum hosted by Research Ireland and a meeting with Taoiseach Micheál Martin at Government Buildings.

Established by the European Union in 2007, the ERC is Europe’s main funding organisation for excellent frontier research, with an overall budget for 2021-2027 of over €16 billion. The ERC’s mission is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields, based on scientific excellence. Some 200 ERC grants have been awarded to scientists in Ireland to date, worth over €350 million.

While highlighting the importance of frontier research during her visit, Prof. Leptin is also expected to stress the need to take a long-term view and invest in curiosity-driven research.

Prof. Leptin sees Ireland as playing a critical role in paving the future of European level support for science and innovation when it holds the EU rotating presidency in the second half of 2026.

The ERC President Leptin said she is “very pleased to be in Ireland and discover first hand some of the science and impact of the many ERC grantees based here, and to engage with the Irish government at the highest level, as well as the wider scientific community”. She added “I am confident that Ireland, with its strong scientific traditions and its ambitions for the future, understands the need to invest boldly in science.”