Last week, the European Research Council (ERC)—the EU’s main funding body for basic scientific research—announced the recipients of its 2025 Advanced Grants. These highly competitive awards, totaling €721 million, are aimed at senior researchers who have already made significant contributions to their fields.

A total of 281 projects were selected, each receiving up to €2.5 million over five years. Italian researchers secured 37 of those grants. One particularly noteworthy aspect is how the awards were distributed across countries. In EU funding competitions, there’s often a concern that more politically or economically powerful nations will dominate, regardless of proposal quality. That wasn’t entirely the case here.