Successful First Call for EUROCORES Theme Proposals

Scientific quality, novelty and European added value are among the criteria in the first annual Call to the European scientific research community for EUROCORES (European Science Foundation Collaborative Research) theme proposals, made by the European Science Foundation (ESF) in April and which closed on 15 June.

At the closing date, ESF had received 52 theme proposals. In the coming months, these will be assessed by the ESF Standing Committees and the newly established EUROCORES Committee. The goal of the EUROCORES Scheme is to provide a flexible framework which allows national research-funding organisations to join forces to support top-class European research in and across all research areas. It also enables researchers in Europe to cooperate so that they reach the scale needed to contribute to the frontiers of science.

“We are delighted with this first result from new procedures we introduced for the EUROCORES scheme,” said Dr. Svenje Mehlert, EUROCORES Scheme Coordinator at ESF. “These are designed to allow for a competitive process for the selection of new themes for scientific research. This way we can select the best and scientifically most urgent topics for European research collaboration.”

In collaboration with national funding organisations, ESF developed the new procedures during the past year based on the experience of the 20 EUROCORES programmes which have been running over the last five years. Clear guidelines for the proposals have been developed as part of a firm objective to ensure high quality of the selected programmes as well as better support for the selected themes from national funding organisations.

“The new EUROCORES procedures are meant to ensure timely development of the selected EUROCORES themes into viable EUROCORES programmes,” Dr. Mehlert said. “Selected themes will be transformed into programmes for which the Call for project proposals for the appropriate scientific community will be in early March 2006 and funding for researchers’ projects should be available in spring 2007.”

The EUROCORES Scheme provides programme coordination and support for the networking of funded scientists through the EC Sixth Framework Programme under Contract no ERAS-CT-2003-980409. Research funding is provided by participating national organisations.

Contact

Svenje Mehlert
Tel: +33 (0)3 88 76 21 78
Fax: +33 (0)3 88 37 05 32

Category: Media Centre, Press Releases 2005