Innovation venture seeks researchers
A five-year Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions project has announced its search for researchers in order to help enhance innovation and collaboration.
The ‘Opening Sphere UAB-CIE to PostDoctoral Fellows’, or P-SPHERE, venture is co-ordinated by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) in Spain and is part of the wider ‘Sphere UAB-Campus of International Excellence’ (Sphere UAB-CIE) project that aims to realise greater innovation through increasing collaboration between RDI centres at the university’s campus and the surrounding area. Seven institutions, part of the Sphere UAB-CIE, are taking part in the Horizon 2020 project and will assist with financing and hiring scientists.
The Horizon 2020 project’s two calls aim to attract international researchers and focus on interdisciplinary research, linked to the strategic challenges of Horizon 2020, and mobility, with the researchers coming from other countries and undertaking stays at institutions, companies and technology centres.
48 postdoctoral contracts of three years’ duration are to be awarded, with the fellows conducting their research at the UAB-CIE Sphere; research will be based on five multidisciplinary research domains, namely food, health, smart and sustainable cities, cultural heritage and materials and energy.
The P-SPHERE project is partly funded by the MSCA’s 2014 COFUND scheme; the venture has a total budget of nearly €10.5m, with the Commission providing nearly 50% of funds.
The first call for applications will open next month, when 31 research fellowships will be on offer. The second call, in autumn 2016, will offer 17 fellowships. The project runs from 2015 to 2020 and more details can be found here.
