Composed by Bob Fisher
H2020: Marie Sklodowska-Curie travel & training fellowships
Dear all: I attended a H2020 briefing on the planned Marie Sklodowska-Curie travel &
training fellowships activities. This is the H2020 equivalent of the FP7 Marie Curie scheme.
Please let your research staff, including post-docs, and graduate school know about these
opportunities.
It was by Edward Ricketts @ bbsrc.ac.uk <http://bbsrc.ac.uk>, from UKRO (Brussels bit of
UKRC)ERC helpdesk.
Marie Sklodowska-Curie funds research training with cross-border or cross-sector mobility.
For boosting career prospects. It comes under H2020 pillar 1: excellent science.
6 billion Euros (up from 5), 10% success rates.
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Evaluation criteria will increase important of excellent science.
All research areas, no thematic priorities.
Mobility is required
It is for skill enhancement.
Can fund both individual sabbaticals and PhD research training networks.
Aimed at 2 types of researcher:
Early stage researcher - no PhD, less than 4 years of research experience.
Experienced researcher - have PhD or 4+ years of research experience (no longer Advanced
researchers everyone is Experienced).
There are 3 schemes: Initial Training Networks (ITN), Individual fellowships (IF),
secondments (RISE).
Initial Training Network:
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There are several flavours:
a) joint training programme, at least 3 partners, 3 countries, 1 non-academic widening career
prospects through courses typical 6-10 partners 2-4 million, 4 years, exposure to nonacademic sector students must have secondments, 3 year student funding, 540 person-months
limit to proposal, students need not register for PhD
b) European Joint Doctorates: 3 academic partners, 540 person-months limit, award of joint
degree certificates
c) European Industrial Doctorate: 1 academic + 1 non-academic supervisor (students must
already be in a PhD), 180 person-months limit
Can fund participation of non-EU partners (but still need 3 EU countries)
Individual Fellowships - European
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- Mobility from 1 EU country to another EU or a few non-EU countries 12-24 months,
mobility requirements
- Career Restart Fellowships (if you have a 12+ month gap, can change field)
- Reintegration Fellowships (EU researcher returns from outside EU)
- Proposals must show host has great experience with successful training
- May have an intersectoral secondment during the fellowship, may be up to 6 months,
could be with a local SME. Need to identify S ME supervisor and demonstrate their
excellence.
Individual Fellowships - Global
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missed details of this but you can take up fellowship anywhere
RISE: Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (staff exchange)
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It is for skill enhancement.
Develop joint research and innovation projects
 Can also include some non-EU countries
 Must exchange either between sectors or countries
 Must have at least 3 countries, 2 from EU
 Could be research/training/workshops, etc.
 1-12 months
COFUND: co-funding of regional/national/international schemes ***
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Supports existing transnational training schemes, Doctoral programmes must enrol for PhD
Fellowship programmes
not open to permanent employees
Researcher's Night
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Funds a Public Engagement nights, up to 400K, Individual Fellowships
Multiple events occur simultaneously around EU.
Could be thematic,
Times Open Budget
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- ITN 2014 11/12/13 405m
- IF 2014 12/3/14 240m
- RISE 2014 11/12/13 70m
- NIGHT 2014 11/12/13 8m
- COFUND 2014 10/4/14 80m
Proposal closing dates not set yet.
Various panels
Criteria: Excellence: 50%, Impact 30% Implementation: 20%
For more senior staff - emphasise how the experience will benefit the career of the applicant
ITN: 231 UK-led applics, 17% success (average 12.5%) , UK partner in 1156
Fellowships - 16% average, c. 25% for UK
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H2020: European Research Council schemes (e.g. fellowships)
Dear all: I attended a H2020 briefing on the European Research Council's planned activities,
the most important of which in the near future are the Fellowships.
Please let your academics know about these schemes.
It was by Edward Ricketts @ bbsrc.ac.uk <http://bbsrc.ac.uk>, from UKRO
(Brussels bit of UKRC) ERC helpdesk.
The European Research Council (ERC) will have only a few changes from FP7.
ERC has no thematic priorities, simply based on excellence.
UoE has done well this past year on Fellowships:
- Starter (2-7 years post-doc, 5 years, 2m): Michel (Chem), Bayer (Math), Cockroft (Chem)
- Consolidator (7-12 years postdoc, 5 years, 2.75m): Santhanam (Inf) + awaiting SH results
- Advanced (leading researchers w 10 years of excellence, 5 years, 3.5m): Attfield (Chem), - Bradley (Chem), Henderson (Eng), Poon (P&A)
- Synergy grants (2-4 PIs, 15m, 6 years, not for 2014/5): none
- Proof of Concept (ERC grant holders, 150K up to 18 months): none
A Starter grant scheme event day will be held at UoE in January 2014.
The H2020 budget is 70 Billion euro (up from FP7's 53 billion) with 11 Billion Euros for
ERC.
You can apply in 3 domains (25 panels, you choose the panel):
- Physical Sciences and Engineering (PE)
- Life Sciences (LS)
- Social Science and Humanities (SH)
ERC doesn't fund nuclear energy normally, see EURATOM instead.
The ERC fellowships are PI focused, high risk, high gain.
Starter/Consolidator : aim to build up teams, but based on a single PI's leadership
No cross-EC team requirements, but team could be in different countries/institutions
Starter/Consolidator criteria
- PI's intellectual capacity, independence, ability to achieve, creativity, committment (> 50%
on grant)
- significant first author publications (without PhD supervisor participation),
- invited presentations, patents,
- awards, prizes, monographs. Anything that
- 2 pages for track record
- need to be convincing that you can lead: evidence for ability to lead
- safely adventurous projects
Advanced criteria
- previous 10 year track record
- committment (> 30% of time)
- much ground-breaking research and evidence of creativity
- 10+ senior author publications in major journals, prizes/awards
- examples of significant leadership
- (avg age c. 50)
2013 grant round statistics
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- 3320 Starters 8.5% success
- 3670 Consolidator 8-9% success
- 2200 Advanced c. 12% success
Synergy Grants programme: currently under review
ERC proof of concept: original ERC grant must have recently finished, success rate falling
ERC fellowships are single submission, but 2 stage review based on an outline first 25%
stage 1 success, 40% stage 2 success. You can see who previous panel members were.
Starter/Consolidator grants have interviews - need to be a good communicator
Need to select which panel to apply to, but could select secondary panel (but some risks)
Scoring results (25:40:35 for A:B:C grades on the Starter grants)
H2020 changes from FP7
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- more money for fellowships
- more starter/consolidator grants, lower percentage of Advanced
- fixed 25% overheads
- open access policy on publications (but not yet data)
- resubmission rules changed based on score at stage 1
H2020 first call dates:
- Starter: published 11/12/13 deadline 25/3/14
- Consolidator: published 11/12/13 deadline 20/5/14
- Advanced: published 17/6/14 deadline 21/10/14
UK is most successful, with c. 800 grantholders about 20% of total,
c. 15% success rates in UK.