During an informal event on Woudestein campus, Erasmus School of Economics’ dean Patrick Groenen met with this year’s recipients of the starter grants. The starter grant is one of the instruments that was introduced last year as part of the Administrative Agreement (in Dutch: Bestuursakkoord).
Starter grants are specifically meant to leverage the research opportunities for assistant professors who recently received tenure. At Erasmus School of Economics a total of 20 assistant professors received such a grant this year.
The event created an opportunity to celebrate the extra leverage to high quality research at the school. Thus, after introductory statements, each recipient received a personalized certificate from the dean as a tangible souvenir of obtaining the grant. Subsequently, the event also allowed the recipients to discuss among each other and with others how they intend to use the extra budget and to explore if opportunities for synergy existed. Together the 20 grants constitute a contribution of € 4.8 million to Erasmus School of Economics’ direct research costs in the coming years.
Dean Groenen comments: ‘As a research-intensive school we embrace this opportunity to leverage our research activities, especially for young faculty. These grants help to create extra room for them to develop challenging research projects. For us, these grants are not only called ‘starter grants’ because they target researchers in a relative early career stage, but also because the recipients can use the grants to start change in society based on new economic insights. Thus, the starter grant is a very welcome tool to support our strategy.’
The Administrative Agreement will run until 2030. Therefore, Erasmus School of Economics expects to hand out more starter grants to eligible assistant professors in the coming years.
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For more information, please contact Ronald de Groot, Media & Public Relations Officer at Erasmus School of Economics: rdegroot@ese.eur.nl, +31 6 53 641 846.