The European Research Council: A Revolutionary Excellence Initiative for Europe.

Launched in 2007, the European Research Council (ERC) aims at pulling out all the stops in supporting ambitious research projects in frontier research by the most talented scientists and scholars. The ERC grants are generous, open to nationals from any country in the world, and subject to one criterion alone: peerreviewed excellence. We outline the central strategic priorities of the ERC, and briefly describe some impressions from the first two calls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]