Supporting Talent in ReSearch@University of Padua

STARS Grants Program for Individual Research

"Supporting TAlent in ReSearch @ University of Padua - STARS Grants" is a funding syllabus supported with funds from the University of Padova.

The fifth edition of the STARS Call @UNIPD 2025 is currently underway – Info and evaluation results

The syllabus, every two years, encourages the conduct of research of high international standard, innovative and ambitious at the University of Padova, and encourages the University's participation in the calls of the European Research Council (ERC), promoting a positive and open attitude towards basic research funding opportunities in the international arena.

The STARS action supports bottom-up, innovative and ambitious research projects, presented by individual Principal Investigators (PIs), of any age and nationality, who are interested in conducting their research activity at the University of Padova, with the aim of consolidating their professional and scientific course track in view of their participation in international competitive calls, such as the ERC, with Padova as Host Institution.

In the spirit of rewarding excellence, fostering high-level, open, transparent and merit-based competition, as well as promoting the ever-increasing participation of researchers in international competitive calls, the evaluation procedures and criteria adopted in the STARS @UNIPD call are similar to those provided for in the ERC calls. The application forms themselves, albeit with some simplifications, recall the templates proposed by the European Research Council.

STARS Research Stories

Frontier research at the University of Padova