Initial Secondment Agreement Made Easy

Initial secondment agreement

well good afternoon and welcome to this year axis webinar series thank you for joining us my name is Suzanne and I'm the regional representative for EUR axis ASEAN based and Singapore and next to me DFS is my colleague how much hello good afternoon good morning everyone I am Thomas I am based in Seoul in charge of your access here in Korea I am very happy to welcome Korean researchers or Korea based researchers I can see some time we have names in the attendees list so I have no doubts it will be an informative event for you thank you very much for joining excellent and as you know what we're talking about today are the Marie's food obstacle reactions individual fellowships these are postdoc fellowships and you know that the call is currently open closing on the 9th of September and we are very very happy to have with us an expert today we have dr. Brendan hide with us she is a senior advisor based currently in Brussels with a UK research office UK our olya crew and she is the national contact point for the MSC a which means she is really the expert that can give you advice how to do your application in a manner that you have the greatest chance of being successful with your application the webinar today is called submission and evaluation so Bronwyn will focus on that maybe just a few words about Bronwyn herself she has a PhD in life sciences from the UK she's originally from Canada but I think she's been in the UK for many years she's joined ucroe in 2000 so she has quite a long career advising researchers like you today on how to develop a grant proposal that has success she's also has some positive context I think her husband herself himself sari was a grantee he got an individual fellowship so she's looked at this process from both sides and I think without further ado we will hand over to Brandon and Brandon I will be making you now the presenter so you can share your slides thank you just on the logistical side I think you all can see a question dashboard on the right please feel free to ask any question during the presentations we will collect them and address them later during a Q&A session and can I just check that everybody can see my screen now perfect okay excellent so thank you very much and thank you for the welcome and for inviting me to come in and speak today so just to confirm yes um I've been doing this for quite some time now and my husband has been an individual fellow but also a supervisor um so we've got quite a wealth of experience in my household for a matter Kure and hopefully we can answer as many questions today and really support some excellent applications um so the idea to hide behind today's session is to give a little bit of an overview of the scheme and really to focus however on the submission process and the evaluation criteria and really thinking about how to develop a very good and successful individual fellowships application with a little bit of some feedback from an expert evaluator from a session that we had earlier in the UK so just to start with a little bit of an overview about Mercury in general so the mayor's can ask Kiki reactions actually fits within the horizon 20 structure within what was called pillar 1 which is entitled excellent science which is really important to really emphasize that excellent science is really the integral aspect of the marriage Gutowski key reactions along with the European Research Council grants the future and emerging technologies and research infrastructure but what also is equally important to understand is where malinovski reaction sat in the previous framework program so fp7 um where it actually said under people and the reason that this is important because it's still a fundamental ethos behind the theory is to support people and people is as researchers and to support them in their career development and to ensure that they have excellent working conditions within the EU and further afield while they're doing their research and this is something that really is important when you're putting together your individual fellowship application to keep in mind so just a little bit about the individual fellowships call itself just to make sure that we all have a base understanding the individual fellowships are there to support experienced researchers and by an experienced researcher we need someone who has completed and is in possession of their PhD or has at least four years of full-time research experience and the idea behind these fellowships assists to support their mobility the research and training increase their opportunities both within and outside academia and by outside academia we do mean anything outside of academia Metiria very open to what that could be be that an NGO museum other cultural institutions small industrial SME or even a large industrial partner they're really quite openness to what that is depending on the needs of your individual research project and where you'd like to go with your career it also really supports opportunities for international mobility so I'm within and beyond Europe there are some very specific defined mobility eligibility criteria but beyond that there's really no limits in terms of nationality age or your career restrictions other than the minimum which is you need to be classified as an experienced researcher they really encourage the responsible research and innovation approach to your proposal and these are all links to the policy documents and I highly recommend that you do have a look through even if it's just to read the summaries to understand what is really trying to be achieved within the Gnostic theory um actions the beneficiaries and the researchers must follow the European code of conduct or research integrity and the working conditions provided to those of you who are awarded a fellowship must be in line with the European Charter researchers the code of conduct the recruitment and all this is outlined an information packet that the fellows will receive upon award up oh and you can have again follow the links no I'll give you the outlines and link you to the documents the European charter for researcher and the code of conduct for recruitment we highly recommend that you actually refer to these in your proposals in the relevant sections particularly when you're talking about the research environment that you'll be hosted in and also when discussing your career and training opportunities which we'll talk about that a little bit later in the proposal so just to go very briefly there are two main types of European of an individual fellowships the first is the European fellowship so this what we tend to think of maybe first when we're talking about a Mouseketeer individual fellowships these are for someone either who is currently located in an EU Member State or an Associated country and wants to move to another member state or associated country or someone who is located outside of the EU and would like to move back into the EU within that you've got the subject specific panels and the subject specific panels have the standard mobility requirement of having not lived in that Member State or more than or worked in that member state for more than 12 months in the last 36 months so this what we call the standard panel so these are a large number of subject specific panels um you also have three multidisciplinary panels the society and enterprise panel the career restart panel and the reintegration panel which has slightly different mobility requirements the mobility requirements for those three panels is that you cannot have carried out your main activity ie research in the country of the host beneficiary for more than three years in the five years immediately before the content line now the society an enterprise panel is really limited to housed institutions that are non academic so this would be if you wanted to be hosted by an industrial partner or an NGO or a museum cultural other types of console institutions which would not be defined as being academic and the person that is involved in defining whether they're academic or not unfortunately it's the Commission and this would be dependent on how they were validated initially so you're not sure on what their status might be then you need to talk to the proposed host institution um we do know that a lot of museums for instance actually all under the academic category because of the amount of research that they do even though you might think that they would fit into the non-academic categories it's really important to look the career restart panel is really there to support anyone who's had a career break so if you've had been out of a research career so ie not having a research contract or at least 12 months in the last 18 months immediately before they called deadline then you would be eligible for the career restart panel so this could be that you've been on maternity leave long term sick or just unfortunately not been able to have an actual research contract so you also could have maybe no research contract but an arrangement with an institution that allows you to use the library and that is fine you would still be eligible for the career restart panel the other multidisciplinary panel is the reintegration panel and this is really designed to encourage people who are their long-term residents of Europe or European nationals who are currently outside of Europe and would like to come back in now they benefit to the society Enterprise careers restart and reintegration panel is that they have or particularly for the career restart and reintegration panel they have a separate waiting which means actually their success rate is higher than through the standard panel the society and enterprise panel actually has its own dedicated budget and actually also has a much higher success rate if you're someone who would fit the definition of a career restarts so into wife or the career restart panel or the reintegration panel and equally you're thinking about maybe applying for the standard panel the recommendation is usually to go for the career restart or the reintegration panel because they do have a higher success rate if upon during the evaluation they commissioned decide that you actually are not eligible for the reintegration or career we start panel and they will look to move you to the panel to which you would be eligible for so for the reintegration panel they would move you to the appropriate subject panel with a car panel if you have applied for a 24 months career restart project and you would also be able to be moved to a standard panel unfortunately that if you did apply for the 36 month car restart panel there is no equivalent power to which you'd be able to be to be moved to so it's just something to bear in mind the second type of fellowship is the global fellowships and the idea have the global fellowships if you have someone currently based in the member state and associated country or someone who is a long-term resident they don't have to just be a national who's I'm going to go and spend 12 to 24 months and what is termed the outgoing phase add a host institution in a third country and this could be a third country located anywhere in the world and then having a mandatory return phase back into the Member State on associated country the eligibility in terms of ability links to the third country not to the EU hosts so you cannot have a live form or or resided or carried out your work for more than 12 months in the last 36 months in the country of your third country host institution for the global fellowships there are no multi disciplinary panels it is only subject specific panels so hopefully that you understand that the two differences we do have a question about getting in touch with potentially advisor supervisor just to say that on the year access portal some institutions will advertise that they are opening and looking for actively looking for fellows also if there's institutions that you might be wanting to look at again they often will have put advertisements on their individual pages to say that they are actively looking however the best thing to do is actually to look through the literature talk to colleagues they will have recommendations of people that you can then directly contact and that tends to be the most successful or if you've been to a conference and you spoken with someone else or the tender do you think that would be a really interesting person to work within to contact them directly just a little bit on the budget just to say that the amount is set out in the guide for applicants and I'll well iterate many many times the guide for applicants is your will become your best friend during the proposal development the researcher unit costs is the amount that effectively becomes your salary that goes directly to the researcher the institutional costs will go to the institution now altogether all the funding goes from the EC to the beneficiary and in the beneficiary ie the host institution will then pay you your salary according to the researcher unit cost to which you are eligible for the research training and networking costs are there for you to spend as needed in accordance with your project needs against research and training activities the management and indirect costs are used by the institution to support use of provide you a test space basic laptops on all those kind of internal costs that they incur as a result of hosting you the family allowance are is only for those who add up at the called deadlines meet the definition and which means either they have a dependent child or they have a legal leak and demonstrate that they have an equivalency to marriage or are married and it is at the court deadline so unfortunately if that changes during the course of the project you cannot then claim the family allowance I'm also just to remind people that the living allowance is the gross amount and most institutions in Europe particularly almost all of them in the UK will put together the living and mobility allowance and if eligible for the family allowance as one and that will be your full salary so the whole all those three allowances would then be subject to taxation you've got questions on the budget and how it will work for you then it's really important that you talk to your host institution because this will be different in different member states it's different taxation rules and the way that it will be paid out also if you're going to a member state that isn't does not use the euro then they'll have to add additional exchange rate added on to this so it's really important that you discuss this with them ahead of time so that you have a clear understanding of what the financial hacker that you will be receiving who will look like this is just to remind people that the call is open and the deadline is nine of September at 5:00 p.m. Brussels time and they are very very tight on 5:00 p.m. Brussels time if for some reason you're having trouble with submission do take family do takes re screenshots and keep them and submit them to the IT Help Desk at the time if you aren't able to prove that there was a problem then unfortunately there's nothing that they can do to help you if you aren't able to submit in time the as I said the deadline is the 9th of September you'll hear I'm usually at the end of January but then what they I mean that they will give you is February 2021 to find out the outcome the grant agreements between the beneficiaries so ie your host institution and the Commission will be signed between February and March and then you could start between March 20 21 and September 20 22 and again you really do need to think about when you would be wanting to take up this proposal because part of the evaluation criteria you need to be able to justify your activities in the timing of your activities so for instance at the moment she might be thinking of kovat and you might be working on something and talking about vaccine development for instance and how timely that is right now but you also have to think that if you're not starting into September 2022 is that still going to be timely and relevant so your justification really has to be in line with the timing of what you are opposing in terms of your start date sound a quick question about the family like being engaged unfortunately being engaged does not qualify you for the family allowance it must be a really legally recognized now again it's important to talk to your house institution some member states and some third countries do allow cohabitation and and legally recognized cohabitation which we then enable you to be eligible for the family allowance unfortunately the UK does not recognize cohabitation unless you are coming from a country that recognizes it so this is just something again to discuss with your house institution um the ethos is submit early and submit often they were permission will collect the proposals at the deadline so you can submit as many times as you want and we recommend that you do do that so I'm just going to go through the application process to get a lot of questions about how this actually works in practice and then we'll go through the evaluation criteria so if you haven't done so already I highly recommend that you register on the funding and tenders opportunity portal so this is the EU portal and create what is called an e Cass account um the portal is where you'll find everything from upcoming calls you'll be able to submit proposals but it's also the platform that you will use if your assignments lucky enough fittin to be awarded a project and where you'll need to enter everything in terms of your deliverables and reporting it's really important that you get in touch with any of the research support offices at your host institution as many of them will be able to help you with this process you will need to find out from them who are the relevant people that you need to add to the application as I said submit early and often and really keep that guide for applicants in front of you it really is crucial and set so everything that you need in order to apply and to be successful in your application there's a question that we get quite a lot which is who actually submits the application and the reason we get there's a lot is that people need to remember that this is not just your as the fellows application and is actually the supervisors application as well and the way that the grant is structured it is a grant agreement between the institution and the Commission unfortunately and it's not between you and them so by you and the Commission I mean so the legal responsibility lies with the host organization in the member state or an Associated country the supervisor or often they'll have appointed someone else often within the research office can act on behalf of that organization until the grant agreement is signed and as such only the supervisor or the other individual who has been given the capacity to act on behalf of the organization should suppress should press the submit button and also if any other actions need to be taken in the name of the host organization until that grant agreement is signed now the electronic submission system does allow for the researcher to submit the proposal but he or she should really consider the implications of doing this and have a discussion very early on with the supervisor as who will be responsible for hitting the submit button when you've gone into the comm what you will see here is depending on which channel you are wanting to apply for either the query start reintegration Society Enterprise the standard so this would be the subject panels or the global fellowships you would then click one of these submission buttons once you've clicked one of those buttons you will be presented with a forum page allows you to enter in the different contacts once you've hit OK you'll then come to this form and this is kind of really the main page that you want to be working on this is where you can go and edit the administrator forms but this is also where you can download the word versions of the template it's really important that you use the current template and not at the template from last year small changes are made which can have a big impact on the proposal particularly for the evaluators who will expect it to be laid out in a certain way you will then upload your completed proposal as a PDF here and then when you go through to the administrative forms you have a page that looks like this you can either scroll through using these buttons at the top or you can just actually work your way through if you've got questions and how to route fill in this form there's more information here or an annex 3 of the guide for applicants all right happened with my animation but there's some Civic screen that should be showing up here for what the supervisor and input on what the research get input and I'm not sure what this happened but it's really important that you do put in all the full supervisory details so this would be their name their host institution their department and that should go in there and then for the researcher this will includes your own name your dates that accords you when you received your PhD and where you are currently located often the research administrative offices can actually help with this basic administrative data being put into the system um you will also have a number of call specific questions so for the standard fellowships they will have specific questions about whether or not you had military service whether or not you meet the definition of a refugee again will there be a second means yes or no and if yes then there'll be some additional information that you'll be required to put in for the global fellowships again one of the things they will ask is are you a national yes sir now socially and if you are not a national of an EU Member State or an Associated country then this is where they will want to assess whether or not you meet the definition of a long-term resident and then they will ask you to put in the specific dates to which you've been in in that Member State or associate a country and it really is specific dates we often get questions of oh i roughly came in about October unfortunately as you can see here it really is day month year and they take the date to the actual call deadline so unfortunately it is very very specific just so briefly I might talk about the difference between that's a common which will come up again and so convent is a very specific arrangement that the fellow will have with another organization or that other organization has agreed for the duration of the seconded to take on supervisory responsibilities for them could be and the seconds can only happen in another EU Member State and there's some very specific rules regarding their duration in relation to the number of months that you will be involved in the fellowship and also where they can happen for things like the global fellowship so for a global fellowship you could have a second meant at the very very beginning of the outgoing phase to the host institution in the EU member state otherwise it's a comments are spent during the time of the return phase and this is very different from a short stay or a short visit which can happen anywhere in the world this is just to say we will talk about it a little bit more we're talking about putting the proposal together but just to say there's no benefit or not of including or not including a sacrament it really comes down to the individual needs of your research project and your justification for including or not including them in the proposal so do not just add one in because you think it's gonna give you brownie points in terms of the evaluators but because that will be spotted by the evaluators and could actually have a detrimental effect on your proposal all right we also get a lot of questions about if you do have a partner organisation how do you add them into the administrative forms for the global fellowships in the very first page step four parties you would be asked to include the third country beneficial organization there for second mints as well you would then need to as I said under the specific questions here you'll get a pop-up window if you hit yes and you'll be asked and the information in and then in Part B which is actual written part of the proposal you'll have a capacity table under section five or you need to include the capacities of the participating organisations for the proposal it's really really important that you follow the formatting guidelines set out in the guide for applicants so for example minimum font size 11 the margins must need to be at least 15 millimeters and the tables are really there for illustrative purposes and should not contain the core text itself the page formatting will be checked and if it's deemed to not meet the page limits it will be adjusted and unfortunately that the adjustment means any of the pages and that beyond the maximum page length and they will not be evaluated they would not be read by the evaluators the footnotes are for literature references only and this is regardless of your subject discipline so if your subject discipline you would normally include the list of references at the back of the proposal you would not do that in this case in this case this will go into the footnotes if you're in a subject discipline which usually have quite lengthy footnotes with large descriptors you really need to think about whether or not that descriptor is needed and whether it's more appropriate to put into the actual text if you spend a half of have a very large footnote which effectively takes half of the page but isn't this leigh-anne value you then lost half of that page of text from the proposal itself unlike other grants such as Europe Erie search council groans any information that's provided through the hyperlink will be disregarded and just to say that for the Gantt chart tables and footnotes you can go to minimum font size updates on part B's is actually written proposal what does it include first of all make sure you do as I said before download the templates respect all page limits it includes part b1 which is a maximum of 10 pages and what we will focus on which is on the excellence impact and implementation sections and then Part B to which there is no over our page limit but there are some indicative page lengths for example there's and this is where one of the changes is for the CV of the fellow it now gives it as an indicative page link in previous years there is a defined page limit for the CBI below part b2 also is wherein you'll find section 5 which is the capacities of the participating organizations so this includes all partner organizations as well as the host institution it's also where you'll need to include any ethics and if you are going on a global fellowship and it is also where you need to include the letter of commitment the letter of commitment is only needed from partner organizations involved in a global fellowship you are involved in a global fellowship it's important that you get this letter of commitment signed as early as possible it can take quite a while unfortunately depending on the setup of some institutions to actually get the letter signs and this is just to reiterate that the letter of commitment is only for the outgoing phase inter mind global those applying for a global fellowship that if you do not include the letter of commitment then your proposal will be deemed to be ineligible and will unfortunately not be evaluated so the key thing to really think about when putting a proposal together is the evaluation criteria the evaluators themselves do not get any other additional information and what you receive and the training and at which they do receive is very comprehensive but it is against this exact evaluation criteria which is excellent impact and implementation and you can see here that excellence gets 50% of the score of the total score impact is 30 and implementation is 20 and in case sent multiple projects score the same exactly the scheme what they will then look is who scored the most under excellence who scored the most under impact who scored the most under implementation they will also look at who had addressed gender and then also who has involved non-academic organizations so just to go through a few things to do with the evaluation criteria and what they're really looking for under the different sections so for the quality and credibility of the research and innovation project or they really wanted you to have a clear focused research objectives make sure you have a really good overview of the project explain why it's novel how its groundbreaking and have a very clear planned methodology and the methodology that you need to think about as well as how this will relate to the training element the key thing that is really important and I cannot stress enough is that this is not just a research project this is a research and training project it is training through research it's very easy to get wrapped up in the science and kind of forget about the training until afterwards but they really need to be integral so when you're thinking about your methods and their approach that you'll take it doesn't have two methods that you already know these could be methods that you can then learn and as part of your training objectives what you need to think about is where you want to go with your career and how what skills see them research or otherwise that you need to actually reach that at the end of the fellowship know within you know three years after the fellowship five years ten years those types of things it's really really crucial um as I mentioned already gender is also quite important the tagline is if your researcher now or any point in the future might be used for humans there will be a gendered I mentioned to your research and there's some resources about that option so this is just something to think about and it is this explicit evaluation criteria now it might be that you are fortunate or unfortunate enough depending on how you might look at it to work in an area that really is not have any relevance to gender so for example some areas of mathematics maybe high particle physics and that is fine if it's not appropriate then you don't need to try and address that in your proposal what you want to think about is also how your project is really going to open up your career and collaboration opportunities the second element that's as I mentioned that's really important it brings up the training but it's a two-way transfer of knowledge between the researcher and the host institution and any partner organizations often it's very difficult if you have a more senior supervisor and you are more junior researcher to think what am I actually bringing to that supervisor actually you're probably bringing a lot more than you realize you're bringing a network with you because you're coming from somewhere else you probably have some skills and knowledge that they might not have particularly if you're moving disciplines or you're moving sectors it might be that you're within your own niche the supervisor you're not necessarily transferring as much to and maybe you're gaining the most from but they would have other people in their group that you are then proving knowledge to within their department within the center depending on how they're set up so it's not just about what you're bringing to your individual supervisor but what you're bringing to the research environment to which you will be working and you need to have be very clear about how that knowledge is going to be transferred will you be participating in seminars how often will you be participating in seminars will you be doing you know workshops will you have mentoring a supervisory role over a PhD a master student as part of your research these are the discrete things that they want to seize you need to be very clear and discrete and in the activities that you're putting into this project as I mentioned it really is training through research and we see a lot of projects fail because if either really focus on the research or less often they've really focused on the training and it's about getting that balance and really demonstrating that they are fully both elements are integral to each other the research project makes a focus for the shell fellowship it should be framed in the context of training so really think about all the different training that you might need in order to be successful both for the fellowship but in future career prospects for the global fellowships it's also about how you okay take any in Furman during the outgoing phase and bring that back I'm doing the return phase or the quality of the supervision and the integration of the the team again it's really important to think about the qualifications and experience of the supervisor this does not mean that you need to have a very experienced supervisor and in fact we often encourage more junior researchers to actually use this as a tool in order to develop their leadership and supervisory skills and to start to build their own research groups and labs what you need to think about is what experience have they had have have they supervised master students or undergraduate students do they lead on any internal committees or external committees through other networks they might be involved in so looking at all the different experiences of that supervisor might have that would then be able to demonstrate that they will be successful in mentoring you and supervising you or the duration of your fellowship if you are going to have if they are quite junior they might choose to have another member of staff supervisory supervise you as well so might additional mentorship or if it's moving disciplines again they might decide that having someone else who has an additional expertise involved is really important and you need to discuss this and how this will also contribute the environment in which you are working in your integration and knowledge and development to think about the hosting arrangements and really think about your career development plan and for the global fellowships unfortunately this has to be for both the outgoing and incoming phases so unfortunately the length of proposal is not any different for the global fellowship and for a European fellowship you do actually need to put in more information for the global fellowship everything that you put in for your host and the EU member state must be repeated for the house in the third country for the capacity of the to reach and reinforce a position of professional and maturity or independence again think about the candidates track records show how this will then help them to kind of continue through this fellowship that this fellowship will help them with this their current trajectory to move forward if they've had their career break how this fellowship will actually help bring them back into the research environment and help them with their career development and that type of dialogue often we get asked is it okay to say at the end of this we hope to have a permanent job absolutely these are the types of things that you need to be thinking about you currently have a permanent job we also get questions can we still apply the answer is so yes what you need to think about is where you are currently say if you're a junior lecturer and you want to go to a senior lecturer or you're a senior lecturer and you want to go to become professor what are the skills that you will need and how will this fellowship enable you to get those skills so that you can progress in your career I really think about your CV make sure that it really brings out all the relevant information and again you might find unlike in a normal CV where it's really bullet points you actually have a little bit of narrative to really help to explain and pull out these points it's about explaining how the fellowship will have an enormous positive impact on the researchers career and you really need to be able to demonstrate that capacity for independent and thinking and leadership of that researcher um again if they are more junior how will this fellowship walk opportunities will they get through this fellowship to actually develop those skills so if one of the things that they're missing is if never organized a conference before maybe as a result of the fellowship during the two years or three years depending on the type of fellowship they'll actually organize a conference so it's those types of activities that you could think this relates both to their career development and the training and also the research needs because that'd be a really good way to disseminate the information so again showing how these types of activities all tie together is really important or impact really think about enhancing the potential and the future career prospects of the researcher so this again is you can see a lot of the same ideas of being repeated as what we've discussed already from some of the other elements right it's not a requirement to do during the proposal development stage but often it can be really helpful to do a bit of Career Development planning there's a number of tools that can help you to do that identify and help the researcher think about where they want to be where do they want to be at the end of the fellowship five years ten years and what are the skills that they are going to need to get there what are the new competencies that will be required and how will these be achieved throughout the lifetime of the project another key thing that unfortunately we see it's often missed or isn't very well justified and explained in the proposal are the promote proposed measures to exploit and disseminate the action results be very clear about your planning and how you expect to disseminate the project results and dissemination shouldn't be left at the very end of the project you want to think about how this will occur throughout the two or three years of your project again depending on your projects there might be intellectual property you might be developing something to explain how if this is the case the dissemination would then feed into exploitation how are you ensure that these results are actually targeted to their current stakeholders be there or peer so scientific industry society scientific other scientific research fields and again really thinking about the planned dissemination and exploitation activities and think about how you might need to target them and then also thinking about the gender element and these as well where different methods need to be used depending on the gender and/or the different target groups will be very clear and concise with it in the proposal many institutions within the EU should have designated teams to help with exploitation and dissemination public engagement and having a really good communication with your supervisor and the host institution and will really help you in developing these sections because you'll be able to go to those designated teams and say actually what would you recommend how can we work and develop this together and/or really strengthen these sections of your proposals to get that professional input from these units within the institutions that you like to go and work in um again this is just kind of more about the communicating of the results this time not so much an instance of dissemination and exploitation but more in terms of public engagement how will you have a detailed communication strategy and timeline to actually create awareness of your research and marketers see key reactions more generally as well again thinking that it's not just at the end but throughout the lifetime of the project go beyond just the obvious so everybody will do a website is there other things that you can do beyond just a website or Twitter account for instance um there are a number of Mercury funded events particularly their European researchers nights which occur every year to really help highlight European funded projects or there are other things as well so at the moment there's the call or I'm science it's wonderful this would be attached to the research and innovation days that are held this year will be virtually in Brussels to really engage citizens and European funding the science is wonderful as a chance for current and past and hi Kerry fellows to really highlight their research to a really wide audience and this usually air of him from young schoolchildren to members of the public there's also at the moment called open for a falling walls lab so this is enables researchers and young entrepreneurs a chance to pitch their idea within about three minutes and when I was going to Berlin in November where they get it or the pitch with a chance of winning a bit of money and backing in but also to meets other excellent researchers and innovators who really helped to develop your research ideas so there's a number of these different types of activities which are promoted from eery I'm truly help with this beyond just the researchers night and there's some specific guidance from the Commission about communicating your project which you might find quite helpful when putting these sections together with regards to the implementation so this relates to the cohesion effects of the work plan the appropriateness and the allocation of tasks and resources so this is really about explaining your work plan and your resources and how what you're planning will ensure success of your project and that's a success from a scientific but also career development ethos so it's really important to explain the number of person months that you are planning for your project and why this is appropriate and again this comes back to really thinking about proposed start dates and why you're justifying the start dates against the objectives and the expected outcome and impact of the proposal your work palms should be very clear and realistic you should show the desired out pat it's our impacts and there is a very specific template for the Gantt chart and you need is outlined in the template and that is the Gantt chart that you need to use it needs to be very clear and often again some of the feedback that we get is that the Gantt charts were not clear they were not detailed enough and so this is something to be wary of and it's a very easy place to lose or gain points as it were in terms of your evaluation another thing to really think about is the appropriateness of the management structure and procedures and thinking about risk so describing the organization and management structure again you might be able to get some support from this from the research offices at your host institution many of them will have almost set templates that can be used or can tell you what should or should not be included they can give you numbers for example how many other mercury fellows that they've had what support has put in place with those types of activities so it's really important to speak with them about this particularly for this section if you are involving any entities with a capital or legal link and again you need to discuss their involvement and any risks that might be associated with their involvement are being mitigated would you get questions about Kovac and risk if depending on the timing of your project that you think and that unfortunately there's some might be a risk because of the cobra containment measures then this is something that you can mention under the risk mitigation section but again you do need to think about this very carefully we do not know how things will proceed in the future and also if you are not looking to starting to September 2022 and it might be very difficult to make the case you really say actually the risks that are in place now will still be in place then um again this kind of reiterates back to the appropriateness of the institutional environment to the need and necessity to speak with your host institution who will be able to help you again with this section all right describe the contribution of the beneficiary and any partners doing the research and training activities and the question of they're asking here is why is the house institution that you have picked the right place for you to do your fellowship why have you chosen to go there and not chosen to go somewhere else it doesn't mean that they have to have every piece of equipment or every piece of knowledge that you need because you will build that in through either short visits or circum ends but why would you spend the bulk of your time there why are you going there why do you want to work with this researcher why do you want to work with this institution and you need the same description for the global fellowships as well for the outgoing phase you also need to demonstrate a commitment that the institution and the supervisor have towards you as a researcher so if you have a supervisor or potential supervisor who you know is going to be retiring very shortly after starting what you need to think about is are there measures in place to ensure that they will be able to continue to support you throughout your fellowship and this is where the additional supervisors might be come in handy or you might know that actually they will have some sort of arrangements in place after their retirement nor to be able to support you so it's really important just to think about these things as you're going forward um it's a little bit on proposal advice not trying to pick up some other questions after I go through the proposal advice is the reminder that this is the supervisors grants so they put this on their CV as you do as a fellow mmm really it's important that both the PI and the fellow are involved in writing the proposal a lot of the feedback that we get from the evaluators is that they can really tell when the fellow has written at all on their own with little to no support from the supervisors or the principal investigator and/or the host organization and unfortunately it's usually obvious because they are generally speaking weaker applications and so it's really important that you do speak with them these are a different type of proposal than you might have been used to writing before so getting advice and guidance and support is really really crucial the fellow you do need to have a strong CV but this is a relationship to your career stage so if you've just finished your PhD and the expectation for your field is someone just finishing a PhD would not have a publication the man is absolutely fine mmm um if your 10 years post PhD and never had a permanent position for the past 10 years they're probably going to expect you to have a few publications so again you really need to think about your discipline and what is expected for your discipline and where you are within your career stage so there is no template an expectation of what an ideal candidate will apply it's really important that you read all the called documentation and the evaluation criteria I've said before the guide for applicants is incredibly important and needs to be with you throughout entire writing process really do consider any relevant EU policy documents maja Korea is wonderful it's completely bottom-up there is no predefined research areas but if your project does have you relevance and again it's important to read those and some of the other links that I've sent through like about the researchers or the code of conduct for researchers those again are important to read because it can really help you in setting out what you want to achieve in terms of your training and development and what the expectations are from the institution do you make it easy for the evaluators to find the information they often have 15 to 20 proposals to read and a very short and defined time frame in which to do it they take this very seriously but as you know when you're putting this together it is not a short application they are doing this in addition to their normal working day if they have to look for something they might find something else that you don't want them necessarily to see which then leads them to questions so you really want to make it as easy as possible and this is also we're following the template is really important thank you very much Bronwyn for this very insightful presentation I'm afraid I have to stop you due to lack of time some questions yeah and perhaps we could address those questions I don't know if you see them or do you want me to read them for you I can see some of them but not all of them it seems like okay yeah two questions about about secondment what type of activities are we expected to carry out at the secondment location and as researchers are expected to physically spend time at this economy location mast is a common organization be in the host country okay so this a common organization does not need to be in the host country it can be but it has to be in an EU Member State or an Associated country it cannot be in a third country so if here's a common organization it is in a different a Member State or an Associated country then the expectation is that you would be in that Member State for the period of the sacraments right obviously if it is in the so for example in the UK if you go to another UK institution for your second meant and it's a commutable distance then there would be not be the expectation that you would move there okay another one is about eligibility criteria yeah activities very quickly or yes please okay please continue for the activities for this economy it really depends on your individual project and what you need to do so there's no predefined activities of what secretes to a nurse a convent if the difference between a short visit and as a comment has to do with the supervisory arrangements if you are organizing a seconded then you need to identify someone at that partner organization who will supervise you during this economy and that's what makes the difference between us a comment and a short visit also a short visit is a bit of a newest nomer they're not necessarily short they can be a number of months they can occur anywhere in the world so even in a third country but there is no supervisor at that institution a supervisory arrangement is retained by your original host or the Marie Curie fellowship thank you the next one is about the eligibility criteria being in possession of a doctoral degree does it mean that the applicant must have the degree by the deadline of the application which is ninth of September or before the grant start it has to be by the 9th of September clear and another one is about multidisciplinary panels they appears to be narrow categories the person who is asking don't seem to fit in any he she or he or she is more towards jump-starting the career instead of restarting it since he or she need to be under the membership mentorship often okay it's not a comment than a question let's keep that we will show you a ders maybe this would address the but they will find the right evaluators for your proposal so if you submit under say the life sciences panel and the the chair decides that the evaluator tours the three evaluators or one of the three evaluators who are assigned to your proposal actually aren't the best people to read your proposal they will find new evaluators so they will do their utmost to ensure that the right evaluators read your proposal regardless of the subjects to which you have been submitted under thank you the next one is about exploitation what does exploitation mean in the impact section please provide examples so exploitation would be say you have developed a widget and that widget could revolutionize another widget then there would be about how would you exploit that so how would you link up your findings with industry for them to then further the development or get that widget into market does the start date for work plan have to be really specific it means the exact date month and here so it doesn't necessary have to be the third of January 2022 but it should be January 2022 there is an expectation on the understanding the these things will shift a little bit during the course of the project as your project develops as the field develops if there's going to be a dramatic shift so either you decide not to do a specific activity anymore or you thought you were going to do something in January and you're going to do it a year later then that would be discussion that you would have with your project officer to make an amendment to the grant agreement and it's absolutely fine thank you I'm not sure how to understand the next one but maybe you will does the two-way exchange of knowledge must reflect in the particular research problem as well it does not in the part in the research question that you're trying to achieve it doesn't necessarily but it's about what you are going to be bringing more broadly and more generally to them and vice versa thank you the duration of the project for individual fellowship of 24 months of duration can we manage it for three years with a modification for example each eight months for the first year second year and third year so for the European fellowships there is a provision for part-time working and for personal professional reasons which would then enable you to extend because the number of fellow months person months has to be maintained so if you went part-time then for two years and you could do that over a four year period of time or you would have to look at doing some sort of suspensions but this would be a discussion that you would have at the grant agreement preparation stage you would not put this in the proposal you would write the proposal as you are going to do it full-time for the 24 months thank you can you say something more about successful rate the question is what was the acceptance rate in the previous calls so in general the success rate is just less than 16 percent over all the panel's it is higher it's about 17 percent or the multidisciplinary panel so doing that's an average the society at enterprise had a very high success rate last year because very few people actually submitted to society that revised panel okay Rick just to say that there are specific breakdowns in terms of success for different member states if you do really want to go into that then it's again worth talking to I'm your host institution and the NCPA the country of their host that you'd like to go to and they can give you the very specific or that member state thank you we are answering also questions directly some of them should we have English qualification test example TOEFL IELTS to apply for my Oscar bespoke reactions you don't need them as part of the application but if you are coming to for example the UK which just depending on the type of visa that you would be applying for you might need to do a language test but it is not a requirement for the proposal um itself okay with two minutes to close so I only want to add something do you want me to answer the question about UK eligibility it's come if you can of course I mean yes yes it abuse is so nervous fine for the current call um there is the what is called their withdrawal agreement so this is agreement between the UK government and the opinion yin which stipulates that the UK can continue to participate in those calls which fall under the current multi-annual financial framework to the end of those calls so ie UK host institutions can continue to be engaged in an apply for a European funding for the lifetime of the project so you could apply to come to the UK with the UK house and continue to receive EU funding for that project or the lifetime regardless of when your project starts ie even if it's after the twin December 31st thank you very maybe a little bit of self-promotion here some of the questions right through our portal so please visit your exes dot rrg for the specific countries please visit a cell hopper Korea have we try to answer those questions on individual basis as well so please feel free to contact us via our emails we are here for you and hopefully we will be able to provide you some support Suzanne last words yeah just to add that we will publish this recorded webinar on our channel so you can watch it again at your own leisure and someone just asked a final question can you share some successful proposals and we do have some that have been given to us through the net for mobility Network that fragment is a member of these are proposals where applicants agreed to have these published so we will also be able to make these available to you to have a look at there was a final question Brendan maybe to ask this for political correctness people were asking if I apply with the UK host does that limit my chances absolutely not so last year we had the situation where the deadline was so the results came out very close to when we were supposed to be the deadline for leaving we had 287 successful applications last year we are the highest and most successful member states and we have been the previous years as well so we still continue to do very well you have to remember that the evaluators are experts and they evaluate against the evaluation criteria exactly and I think with this let me just check whether we have one final question no someone is just saying thank you which is perfect and again we will share the rank recording and his friend were degrees we will check with it later on maybe we can also share the slides so yeah I'm very happy for the slides to be to be shared that's perfect and on these slides then we will make some additions Thomas and I will add a link to some of the resources that you can access for example proposal which are publicly available and you can look at them and please by all means always just contact us so we can either help you ourselves or we can connect you once again with the fabulous NCP's that we have in Europe such as penguin ID to give you further advice and I think with this thanks so much penguin for being with us today oh thank you very much thanks everyone and good luck for something you just crossed stay safe everyone yes I am I