Major programs

Investments for the future

The Investissements d'Avenir program represents €35 billion, including €22 billion earmarked for higher education and research to strengthen France's competitiveness on the world stage. Of this €22 billion, nearly €18 billion takes the form of competitive calls for projects. The University of Montpellier is heavily involved in this program through numerous projects that it leads or partners with. Learn more

ERC grants

The European Research Council coordinates and funds scientific projects "at the frontier of knowledge" within the European Union, with grants that reward scientific excellence. This program is open to all disciplines.

Current European Research Council projects:

ERC Starting Grant

Erika Burioli ( Host-Pathogen-Environment Interactions Laboratory) with the HYPERCAN project, which focuses on transmissible cancers in mussels.
Portrait of Erika Burioli
Paul Antonio (Geosciences Montpellier) with the UBEICH project, which proposes a new experimental method to refine the dating of the Earth's inner core.
Portrait of Paul Antonio

ERC Advanced Grant

David Mouillot (MARBEC), whose BLUE-AFRICA project will conduct transdisciplinary research to assess the potential of coastal marine resources in reducing poverty and emigration in rural areas of East Africa affected by land aridification.
Read the press release

ERC Synergy Grant

Daniele Di Pietro (Institut Montpelliérain Alexander Grothendieck) with the NEMESIS project, which aims to understand how to overcome current technological barriers in numerical simulations of complex physical problems.
Portrait Daniele Di Pietro

Past ERCs

Sara Cavaliere (Charles Gerhardt Institute in Montpellier) with the SPINAM project, which focuses on electrochemical devices for converting and storing hydrogen energy.
Video report with Sara Cavaliere

Key initiatives

In order to pursue its strategy of supporting the scientific communities that give the site its unique identity, the I-SITE Excellence Program (PEI) certified five new key initiatives in April 2024. Three of these are internationally oriented and funded by the UM2030 project of the France 2030 program – IDéES "Integration and Development of Idex and I-SITE" project, while the other two, funded directly by the PEI, aim to bring together communities from different research structures in Montpellier around interdisciplinary themes in order to give them greater visibility.