SHOTLIST: - BERLIN, GERMANY (MAY 28, 2025) (ANADOLU - ACCESS ALL) 1. GITEX EUROPE 2025 FAIR IN BERLIN 2. BOOTHS AT GITEX EUROPE 2025 3. VISITORS AT GITEX EUROPE 2025 4. VISITORS GETTING INFORMATION AT BOOTHS 5. INTERVIEW WITH EYSTEIN JANSEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF EUROPEAN RESEARCH COUNCIL (ERC)BERLIN, GERMANY - MAY 28: Funding proposals for artificial intelligence (AI) projects in Europe have seen a “tremendous rise,” prompting the need for more specialized panels to evaluate them, the vice president of the European Research Council (ERC) told Anadolu. Eystein Jansen, while attending Europe’s largest tech event GITEX Europe 2025 in Berlin, stated that the ERC covers a broad range of subjects, “from outer space to inner Earth to social science” when it comes to funding research. “The role the ERC plays is to attract the best minds in Europe to send the most interesting and ambitious proposals for things they want to do,” he said, noting that young people receiving ERC grants have a “good promise for a good career as a scientist.” Jensen emphasized that the AI field is developing at a fast speed, and the rapid rise of AI will continue, as the number of project proposals rises. “We also see that, in almost all fields of research, artificial intelligence is now a part of the normal toolbox of scientists,” he said. “This wasn’t the case a few years back—this has revolutionized research.” Jensen noted that in the last two years, AI has been influential over a wide scope, citing advances in fields such as meteorology: “For instance, we now can do weather forecasting using artificial intelligence that is just as good as the old-fashioned way of doing it for less the price and less computer power to develop.” “Europe has played a major role in the development of the technologies laying the foundations,” he said. “(While) there has been research on artificial intelligence in Europe and many of the foundational technologies or tools come from research in Europe, we are lagging behind in terms of utilizing the potential.” “We need to scale up and move that competence into applications,” he noted. - ERC has funded around 40 projects in Türkiye Jensen stated that Turkish scientific institutions and scientists can also submit proposals to the ERC, and while there are a number of applications, proposals from Türkiye remain limited. “There is a possibility for Turkish scientists who are ambitious and really want to make a breakthrough in that field to come to the ERC with our proposals,” he said. “I think we have, up until now, about 40 Turkish projects primarily in Ankara and Istanbul funded but we can certainly have more.” Jensen mentioned that funding is granted primarily to individual scientists and groups. “The size of a grant for a young scientist who wants to start is between 1.5 million to 2 million euros over a five-year period,” he noted. “If you’re a more advanced scientist, you can get 2 to 2.5 million euros.” Larger group projects may be awarded grants of €10 million to €12 million ($13.6 million). He also acknowledged that inflationary pressures may require increased grant amounts in the next funding rounds. Jansen added that the ERC, which operates with an annual budget of €2.5 billion ($2.8 billion), distributes more than 1,000 grants each year, primarily to research institutions and universities across Europe.