The European Young Investigator (EURYI) Awards scheme was a prestigious research award designed to attract outstanding young scientists in all research fields to the European research landscape. It was set up by the European Heads of Research Councils (EuroHORCs) and the

European Science Foundation The European Science Foundation (ESF) is an association of 11 member organizations devoted to scientific research in 8 European countries. ESF is an independent, non-governmental, non-profit organization that promotes science in Europe. It was e ...

together as a grant scheme for researchers from any country in the world to create their own research teams at research institutions in any country in

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

participating in the scheme. Awards were worth up to 1.25 Million Euros, to be spent over a period of five years. It was meant to attract the strongest scientists, irrespective of age and gender. It had a two-stage selection process. In a first step, the applications were assessed by the participating organisation from the proposed host country. The second selection step was carried out by the European Science Foundation, involving interviews in front of broadly-based international panels, and resulted in the final selection of awardees. The first 25 prizes were awarded on 26 August 2004 as the EURYI Awards 2005 during the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) in Stockholm by the then president of the EuroHORCs, Professor Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker. The scheme was born out of the wish to allow the best researchers to build careers in Europe. The co-initiating institution EuroHORCS, founded in 1992 and dissolved in 2011 and succeeded by

Science Europe Science Europe is an association of major research funding organisations (RFOs) and research organisation, research performing organisations (RPOs). It was established in October 2011 and is based in Brussels. The association facilitates co-opera ...

, was an association of 18 research organisations from 15 European countries, all of which being members of the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

at the time except

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

and

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

. The EURYI Award was the blueprint for the much larger ERC Grant scheme, initiated in 2007 within the Seventh Framework Programme, with Professor Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker, the initiator of the EURYI Award, being the ERC's first Secretary General. The EURYI Award 2007 was the last EURYI award granted, being replaced by the ERC scheme.

References

European science and technology awards {{Sci-award-stub