ERC starting grant

casestudy

 

 My long-term vision

  • Integrate clinical and fundamental research
  • Create novel diagnostic tools based on fundamental knowledge
  • Form bridge between researchers with complementary expertise

Modeling

Experiment

Clinical

I want to link basic research with clinical research to actually improve the health of patients.

Nele Vandersickel

Experience in all three areas!

ERC starting grant: 2020

SMARTHEART

Combination of two research fields: network theory

&

cardiac arrhythmia

Created a new diagnostic tool to determine automatically the source and location of cardiac arrhythmia based on network theory

Research proposal:

  • Past the state of art: bring something new
  • Yet already demonstrate the proof of principle: however not too much <-> incremental research
  • Think about interdisciplinary projects (usually people really like that). Make sure you have expertise for both fields
  • Speak to your audience: E.g. clinical audience? make proposal clinical and not too complicated specifically in B1
  • Make proposal one unity
  • Read the evaluation criteria!
  • High/Risk high gain
  • Important subject
  • Name many plans B in case plan A does not work

Own excellence

  • I switched research field: was able to be successful in both of them
  • Write small biography to demonstrate what you did so far
    (e.g. I have a very strange CV)
  • Show scientific independence: publish as last author!
  • Demonstrated the ability to conduct ground-breaking research
  • Required scientific expertise and capacity to successfully
    execute the project

General comments

  • Start in time: it took me 7 month to write 1st proposal
  • 1 month to redo proposal
  • Reuse your proposal in case you do not obtain ERC for other applications (e.g. B1 fits in research proposal to become professor)
  • I used my proposal to write many papers already.