EU and International Programmes

Our researchers collaborate widely internationally through a variety of research funding programmes, from one-to-one PI collaborations to  European funded consortium projects.

AMBER has world leading researchers and a track record in delivering excellent science. This is reflected in the 27 ERC awards hosted by the Centre to date. These include 14 primary awards across the Starting, Consolidator and Advanced Grant programmes and 10 Proof of Concept awards, focussed on translating ERC outcomes into new innovations. The centre is also home to Prof. Valeria Nicolosi, Ireland’s only six-time ERC awardee.

AMBER’s international funding strategy is based on globally diverse funding sources; this enables us to target grand societal and technological challenges and raises the profile of AMBER and its researchers internationally. There is significant focus on European Commission funding. The Centre has won approximately €60m in European funding over the past 10 years. For more details about our track record and Horizon Europe topics where we seek collaborators, please download our International Funding brochure below.

The funding team welcomes enquiries from potential collaborators interested in partnering in Horizon Europe programmes, across all three pillars (Excellent Science; Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness; and Innovative Europe). We are very focused on ERC and MSCA programmes in Pillar 1 and EIC Pathfinder and EIC Transitions
in Pillar 3. Within Pillar 2, we are particularly interested in four of the Clusters (Health; Digital, Industry and Space; Climate, Energy and Mobility; and Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment) but our researchers are interested in potential collaborations in any relevant area where our materials science expertise is required’.

Our interest in these Horizon Europe areas build on our previous experience of Horizon 2020, where AMBER had significant successes:

In Pillar 1 (Excellent Science), we had significant successes in the areas of ERC, MSCA and FET-Open (the precursor to the new EIC programmes). In Pillar 2 (Industrial Leadership), AMBER investigators have been involved in projects under the Nanotechnologies, Advanced Materials, Advanced Manufacturing and Processing and Biotechnology (NMBP), and the Information and Communications (ICT) work programmes. Within Pillar 3 (Societal Challenges), most of the focus of AMBER research has been in the Health, Demographic Change and Wellbeing work programme, with some participation in the Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry, Marine and Maritime and Inland Water research, and the Bioeconomy programme. We have also participated in programmes to support the excellent science of our researchers, through the Widening Participation (Spreading Excellence in Europe) programme and the European Institutes of Technology, under the Health and Raw Materials KICs.

The Centre actively supports its early-stage researchers in their career development. We lead the ADMIRE MSCA COFUND Action and DeMANS MSCA RISE Action. Of course, our focus goes beyond European Commission funding and AMBER participates in other prestigious international funding schemes:
Five of our junior researchers hold prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF) awards. AMBER hosts an SFI-EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in the Advanced Characterisation of Materials. AMBER is active in the Fulbright Commission programmes, which support researcher exchanges between the US and Ireland.

• AMBER International funding brochure