"The European Research Council needs our support"

How will you balance your duties as an ETH professor and as ERC Vice-President?
It will be challenging, but I hope that it will be possible thanks to my excellent team at ETH, and the superb support that the ERC Executive Agency provides to the Scientific Council. I will certainly not neglect my teaching obligations, which are very important to me as an ETH professor. I focussed this year¡¯s round of recruiting for my research team on postdoctoral researchers rather than PhD students, so that I still have time to provide the level of mentoring and collaboration that I like. I have also handed over my editorship of a technical journal. Outside of work, I think there will be fewer ski touring days at the weekends, and less chamber music in the evenings! 

You are giving up a lot of things you enjoy. What do you hope to gain from the position? Is it worth it?
I think that involvement with the ERC is very important. The ERC is widely recognized in the scientific community as a unique and valuable funding body, the jewel in the crown of European research funding. We owe a tremendous debt to the colleagues who established it 20 years ago, and it¡¯s important that its future continues to be determined by active researchers.

Why is the future of the ERC uncertain?
The EU research framework programme Horizon Europe expires at the end of 2027. This means that the European political sphere must also reconfirm the legal basis and budgetary framework of the ERC for the next seven-year framework programme. This is a normal procedure. The ERC desperately needs an increased budget ¨C we currently support only half of the proposals that our peer review panels determine to be excellent, and we have never had an inflationary adjustment in our grants. In addition, the autonomy of the ERC is under threat, with the European Commission proposing changes to the ERC's governance structure, such as limiting the term of office of its President. The next two years will be decisive for the ERC's future.

What does this mean for your work at the ERC?
I think my most important task is to do everything possible to secure the future of the ERC so that the next generation of researchers has the necessary support to build their research programmes. We need to make sure that our ERC supporters emphasise the importance of the ERC -- not only for science, but also for society and the economy -- to policy makers, and to provide examples of how frontier research lays the foundation for economic innovation, in Switzerland as well as in the EU. The ERC¡¯s funding schemes are among the most effective and successful in the world and I am passionately committed to ensuring that it continues.

What would you like to achieve as Vice-President?
I would like to see the ERC continue after 2028 with a higher budget and greater autonomy. A doubling of the budget would allow us to fund all the proposals that are rated excellent and to inflation adjust the grant sizes. To introduce new forward-looking funding instruments, the budget needs to be more than doubled.  I also have a personal interest in the role of Artificial Intelligence in research and research evaluation. The ERC has funded frontier research in AI since its inception, and now we are ideally positioned to explore both its opportunities and risks in the research ecosystem. 

But now, it is probably very difficult to obtain more money for research. All European countries are currently investing more in security and defence.
Of course, security is important, and without frontier research today, there will be no new technologies tomorrow ¨C not for healthcare nor for infrastructure or defence. The first draft of the next framework programme has set a doubling of the ERC budget as a starting point, and this budget increase must first be approved by the Member States and the European Parliament. Whilst the parliamentarians have been hugely supportive of research funding, we shouldn¡¯t take it for granted and need to keep emphasizing the importance of frontier research to them, especially with the many competing demands for support. 

In mid-November, the Federal Council and the European Commission signed an agreement whereby Switzerland is once again fully associated and Swiss researchers can apply directly for ERC projects. Will this affect your work?
Both as a Swiss citizen and as a member of the ERC Scientific Council, I am delighted that Switzerland is back on board. The world is facing so many societal problems, and we need the best researchers  ¨C in physical and life sciences as well as social sciences and humanities ¨C working together to tackle them. This is not a time to fragment the talent pool; it is essential that all countries are involved in scientific cooperation as actively and comprehensively as possible. I hope that we can convince Swiss voters of the importance of international scientific collaboration for Switzerland and beyond, so that our association with Horizon Europe is not overturned at the ballot box.

Opponents will say that Europe is not needed to promote Swiss cutting-edge research. The Swiss National Science Foundation has shown that it can step into the breach when EU funds are not available.
It is not enough to simply replace the funds with SNSF grants. That was an important short-term solution but does not substitute for allowing Swiss researchers to compete and collaborate internationally. It is like top Swiss athletes not participating in the Olympic Games but competing in local competitions with the same prize money instead. Frontier research needs the collaboration of the best minds at the European and global level.