Noticia

The European Research Council (ERC) is launching a call for expression of interest regarding Visiting Fellowship Programmes. The aim of the scheme is to promote the widening of participation of researchers with a high potential in the ERC calls.

The Scientific Council of the ERC believes that increasing the international exposure of researchers can help them to develop their full research potential. For this reason the ERC has invited relevant national and regional authorities in Europe to fund potential ERC candidates from the country or the region to visit teams of existing ERC Principal Investigators. The purpose is to offer these potential candidates an opportunity to broaden and strengthen their research profile and vision in an internationally competitive research environment before applying for an ERC grant.

To this end, several national and regional organisations have set up and put in place "Fellowship to Visit ERC Grantee"programmes in line with guidelines issued by the Scientific Council of the ERC. Since the first call in 2016, two new institutions have joined the scheme and further organisations are expected to develop similar programmes in the future.

These programmes are open to researchers of all disciplines and the main evaluation criterion for the applicants is their potential to be awarded an ERC grant on the basis of the quality of their research aiming for excellence. These programmes cover all costs pertaining to the research visit including salary, travel and subsistence costs, but require visiting fellows to apply for an ERC grant within a specified time after the end of the visit. It is expected that, by participating and contributing to a cutting edge research project of the hosting team and receiving advice of the ERC PI, the visiting fellow will be able to prepare a stronger proposal for the ERC.

Should you be willing to host one or more visiting fellows funded under any of these programmes, please indicate this by 15 June 2017, using the following link:

https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/visiting-fellowship-programmes-2017-cfe

The ERC will then share your details with the funding agencies by the end of June 2017. The funding agencies will in turn make this information available to potential fellows from their country or region and assist them in the identification of a suitable ERC project to visit.

If your team is chosen as a desired destination for a visit, candidate fellows will contact you directly to discuss areas of mutual interest and research goals for a possible visit. If at this stage you agree to host the visiting researcher, you will be asked for a supporting letter indicating your willingness to do so.

In the supporting letter you will need to indicate explicitly your willingness to advise the visiting researcher in the preparation of a future ERC proposal.

If a researcher is finally awarded a fellowship by the relevant funding agency, he or she will visit you for a period of three to six months. Visits are expected starting from Autumn 2017 to 2018.

Please note that the ERC itself will not be directly involved with either the selection of the researchers visiting ERC teams or the communication between the ERC PIs and the potential visitors.

The ERC would like to emphasize that the decision to accept visiting researchers is fully that of the ERC-funded PI and is made on a purely voluntary basis.

If you have further questions on this Call for Expression of Interest, please contact ERC at the following address: ERC-VISITING-FELLOWSHIP-PROGRAMMES@ec.europa.eu .