The ERC Scientific Council is composed of eminent scientists and scholars. Members are appointed by the European Commission, at the recommendation of an independent Identification Committee.
Zic Fuchs is the first Croatian scholar to be appointed to that body.
The Scientific Council, the ERC's governing body, consists of 22 eminent scientists who represent the entire European scientific community.
It defines the scientific funding strategy and selects experts to evaluate project proposals.
It is chaired by ERC President Jean-Pierre Bourguignon.
The mission of the ERC, which was founded by the EU in 2007, is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields, on the basis of scientific excellence, according to information on the ERC website.
Every year the ERC selects and funds the best and most creative researchers of all nationalities and ages and it also tries to attract top researchers from other parts of the world. So far the ERC has funded around 9,000 top researchers at different stages of their career.