ERC Crash Course- (Master in one hour what you need to excel for success with your ERC grant application)

This event is a unique opportunity for participants to understand and master how to address the most common weaknesses in ERC proposals. i.e., 

• How to understand and exploit the ambiguity in the ERC evaluation criteria.
• Learn how to direct their grant application to be evaluated by the most appropriate panel members and external evaluators
• Demonstrate that their proposed research idea is a breakthrough
• Apply techniques for making their CV look more impressive
• Be able to formulate high-risk/high-gain and groundbreaking objectives
• Describe the best methodology that is novel but at the same time the most appropriate for reaching their research objectives

About the ERC Expert: Nikolaos FLORATOS Dr. Nikolaos Floratos: Nikolaos has a multidisciplinary education with a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering from City University London, a Bachelor of Humanities in Greek Civilisation from Open Hellenic University, a master of science in Telecommunications and Signal Processing from Imperial College, London and recently awarded with Excellence a PhD on student engagement in massive open online courses from Open University of Catalonia. After his undergraduate and postgraduate studies with distinction as engineer in London (Imperial College, City University), UK, has been working for a number of consultancy and Information Technology companies as consultant and project manager across Europe. He has also an MBA (Master in Business Administration from National Technical University of Athens and Athens University of Economics and Business) and the last 21 years he is involved in planning, managing and evaluating large and small projects in the area of research, education, ICT (Information Communication Technologies), social inclusion, entrepreneurship, standardization and consumer issues.  As a funding expert, personal trainer and coach, he has supported hundreds of individuals and organisations mainly from Europe but also from all over the world on managing state funding (e.g.  from European Commission, National Funds, etc) and receive support for deploying their business idea or mission and he has proved that anyone can become a great proposal writer or project manager of european funded projects through proper guidance, training and coaching. He is an expert on behalf of the European Commission on evaluating and reviewing projects and proposals since 2003. He is the creator of the Funding Expert Transfomation Process™ system that can transform anyone to a great proposal writer and project manager of european funded projects. He has received more than 2000 recommendations and endorsements at his linkedin profile (www.linkedin.com/in/floratos) as a funding expert, coach and trainer. He is also listed in the top first three search results by google as "Funding Expert”.

Specifically, in regard to ERC, he is the creator of the OpenERC platform that is a free online platform to guide researchers to develop a successful ERC grant. You can see the whole structure at https://openerc.eu .This platform has been developed with the support of a multidisciplinary research team including many PIs that have received an ERC grant. Moreover, with the support  of winning ERC grant holders and me being a researcher myself, along with my engaging approach as a trainer we created a platform and a training/coaching course where never before ERC is explained  in simple but comprehensive words and clarifying the mist based on successful examples behind confused concepts such as breakthrough ideas, ground breaking objectives, high-risk/high gain etc.

In addition, he has supported successfully many PIs to develop successfully their ERC proposal and also present it convincingly in front of the ERC panel. He has supported hundreds of PIs to win an ERC grant.