ERC Consolidator Grants 2025: two winning projects presented by Unipd professors
09.12.2025
The European Research Council (ERC) today, Tuesday 9 December, announced the Principal Investigators selected under the ERC Consolidator Grants 2025 call, which allocates a total of 728 million euros to 349 outstanding researchers across Europe.
This year, as in the previous ERC CoG 2024 call, two winning projects were again submitted by faculty members already employed at the University of Padua, who selected one of the University’s 32 departments as their host institution. The awardees are Alessia Russo, full professor at the Department of Economics and Management “Marco Fanno”, who received funding of nearly 1,300,000 euros, and Piero Poli, associate professor at the Department of Geosciences, who will receive a budget of about 2 million euros for his research.
“The success of Alessia Russo and Piero Poli, to whom I extend my congratulations along with those of the entire academic community, represents a result of great significance, rewarding the strength of their scientific careers and the quality of the ideas they have put forward. The ERC Consolidator Grants support projects capable of opening new paths in research, and seeing two of our faculty achieve this milestone confirms the vitality and innovative strength of our University,” notes Daniela Mapelli, Rector of the University of Padua. “The University of Padua firmly believes in research as an essential driver of progress. Investing in research means investing in people, in the freedom to explore new questions, and in the ability to offer answers that improve society. We are deeply proud of the work of our researchers, who every day help advance a tradition of excellence that looks to the future with courage and responsibility.”
Among the proposals selected for funding—distributed across 25 countries—the largest number of grants goes to the United Kingdom, followed by Germany and the Netherlands, while Italy ranks seventh. Seventeen projects are funded at institutions in Italy, and 37 PIs are of Italian nationality (second in Europe only to Germany), while overall the funded PIs come from 44 different nations.
“In a general landscape that is not particularly encouraging for Italian institutions, Padua is one of three universities where two projects were funded,” says Fabio Zwirner, Vice-Rector for Research at the University of Padua. “Congratulations to the two winners: the fact that both are relatively recent recruits to our University confirms the effectiveness of good practices in recruitment as well as in attracting and promoting talent.”
This important result confirms the very positive trend of the University of Padua, which counts among its faculty internationally distinguished scholars capable of excelling in the most competitive European calls. The ERC Consolidator Grant scheme supports highly innovative and visionary research projects in any field of knowledge, funding scientists in the consolidation phase of their careers and research groups. It is also worth recalling that Alessia Russo was already a recipient of a STARS@UNIPD grant in the 2021 edition: a program funded by the University of Padua aimed at promoting the scientific activities of highly qualified Principal Investigators by financially supporting excellent research projects in preparation for the most competitive international calls.
The results obtained in the ERC CoG 2025 call replicate, as already mentioned, those of the CoG 2024 call and align with those of the ERC Starting Grant 2026 call, in which the University also saw two other projects funded. These data demonstrate the University’s ability not only to attract young scientists but also to support the cutting-edge research activities of its faculty—ensuring that, thanks also to adequate support provided through internal programs dedicated to drafting and presenting ERC project proposals (in particular, the Talent@Unipd call), they are able to excel on the international stage.
