See below three excellent funding opportunities originally posted by EURAXESS ASEAN but eaqually interesting to China-based researchers.
Short-cuts:
ERC Consolidator Grants - Call open until 4 February
Get ready - 2020 Call 'Research and Innovation Staff Exchange' (MSCA-RISE) opening soon
Ireland: ELITE-S Fellowhip Programme - 2nd Call. Postdoc Fellowships in ICT
Who can apply?
Researchers of any nationality with 7-12 years of experience since completion of PhD (Extensions are possible under certain circumstances — see the latest ERC Work Programme), a scientific track record showing great promise and an excellent research proposal.
What proposals are eligible?
Criteria
Applications can be made in any field of research.
The ERC's grants operate on a 'bottom-up' basis without predetermined priorities.
Location
Research must be conducted in a public or private research organisation (known as a Host Institution/HI). It could be the HI where the applicant already works, or any other HI located in one of the EU Member States (see also eligibility of UK legal entities) or associated countries
Host Institution
Applications for an ERC grant must be submitted by a single Principal Investigator (PI) in conjunction with and on behalf of their Host Institution, called the applicant legal entity.
Grants are awarded to the Host Institution with the explicit commitment that this institution offers appropriate conditions for the Principal Investigator independently to direct the research and manage its funding for the duration of the project.
Any type of legal entity, including universities, research centres and undertakings can host the PI and his/her team. Legally the Host Institution must be based in one of the EU Member States, or one of the Associated Countries.
The PI does not necessarily need to be working at the Host Institution at the time when the proposal is submitted. However, a mutual agreement and the Host Institution’s commitment on how the relationship will be established are necessary, should the proposal be successful.
Team
ERC grants support projects carried out by an individual researcher who can employ researchers of any nationality as team members. It is also possible to have one or more team members located in a non-European country.
Vacancies for team members interested in joining an ERC led research project, can be published on the Euraxess-Jobs portal.
Initiatives, under the form of 'Implementing Arrangements', exist for ERC-funded teams in Europe to host non-European talented scientists. Find out more about the agreements.
How much?
Consolidator Grants may be awarded up to € 2 million for a period of 5 years. (pro rata for projects of shorter duration). However, an additional € 0.75 million can be made available to cover eligible “start-up” costs for researchers moving from a third country to the EU or an associated country and/or the purchase of major equipment and/or access to large facilities.
An ERC grant can cover up to 100% of the total eligible direct costs of the research plus a contribution of 25% of the total eligible costs towards indirect costs.
How to apply?
ERC grant applications can only be submitted in response to a Call for Proposals.
The ERC has yearly calls for proposals covering all scientific fields.
For an ERC grant application to be complete, it needs to include the administrative forms, the research proposal and the supplementary documents. The completed proposal needs to be submitted by the specified closing date.
Calls are published on this page, the European Commission’s Participant Portal and in the Official Journal of the European Union.
How to proceed?
Read the call documents carefully.
Contact the European Host Institution and gather all the details you need for the application.
Start writing your proposal. Allow time for other people to review your draft. Your NCP, peers and other scientists can all give you helpful support and feedback.
Familiarise yourself with the Participant Portal’s submission service. This is the online system through which proposals must be submitted. (see also the online guide to using the proposal submission service and the H2020 Online manual)
Submit your proposal as early as possible. Deadlines cannot be changed under any circumstances. You can update your submitted proposal any time before the deadline by simply submitting a new version, which will overwrite the old one.
You will get an ‘acknowledgement of receipt’ by e-mail for each submission.
What happens after you have submitted?
The ERC will check whether your proposal meets the call’s eligibility criteria.
External experts will evaluate all the eligible proposals.
You will receive further information as your proposal progresses through the evaluation. For more information we invite you to consult the timeframe for the current call.
See ‘Ongoing evaluations’ for the feedback timetables for calls.
Evaluation process
Proposals are evaluated by selected international peer reviewers who assess them on the basis of excellence as the sole criterion. It will be applied to the evaluation of both the research project and the Principal Investigator in conjunction.
Peer reviewers are in charge of assessing and scoring the proposals. Those who pass the quality threshold are ranked. Depending on the call budget available, a budgetary cut-off applies to the ranking list and only the highest ranked proposals are offered an ERC grant until the call's budget has been used.
For each call there are 25 panels, each covering a sub-section of one of three domains:
Social sciences and Humanities (SH)
Life sciences (LS)
Physical and Engineering Sciences (PE)
Each ERC panel consists of a chair and 10-16 members. The Panel Chair and the Panel Members are selected by the ERC Scientific Council on the basis of their scientific reputation.
In addition to the Panel Members (who act as “generalists”), the ERC evaluations rely on input from remote experts external to the panel, called referees. They are scientists and scholars who bring in the necessary specialised expertise.
Before the deadline of a call, the names of the Panel Chairs are published on the ERC website. Similarly, the names of Panel ¨Members are published, however, after the evaluation process is concluded.
Deadline: 4 February 2020
MSCA-RISE in a nutshell
Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) funds short-term exchanges of personnel between academic, industrial and commercial organisations throughout the world.
It helps people develop their knowledge, skills and careers, while building links between organisations working in different sectors of the economy, including universities, research institutes and SMEs.
WHO CAN APPLY?
Proposals must include at least three partners, which can be academic or non-academic organisations from three different countries. At least two of these should be from the EU or associated countries. Partners from non-European countries including ASEAN can join.
Exchanges between organisations in EU or associated countries must be between different sectors. In worldwide partnerships, exchanges within the same sector are possible.
Proposals should highlight:
- knowledge creation,
- sharing know-how, and
- skills development.
Research staff of any nationality and at any career level – from PhD preparation to experienced researchers – can undertake a secondment. Staff members working in managerial, technical or administrative roles can also take part.
WHAT CAN BE FUNDED?
This action is open to all research areas, whether you are examining social issues like youth unemployment, or creating new solar power applications.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
The grant supports the secondment of staff members for one month to one year. They must be engaged in or linked to research and innovation activities at their home organisation for a certain time prior to the secondment.
They return to their home organisation after the secondment, to pass on their knowledge.
Funding for a RISE project can last up to four years.
Expected Impact
At staff member level:
- Increased set of skills, both research-related and transferable ones, leading to improved employability and career prospects both in and outside academia
- Increase in higher impact R&I output, more knowledge and ideas converted into products and services
- Greater contribution to the knowledge-based economy and society
At organisation level:
- Enhanced cooperation and transfer of knowledge between sectors and disciplines
- Strengthening of international and intersectoral collaborative networks
- Boosting of R&I capacity among participating organisations
At system level:
- Increase in international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral mobility of researchers in Europe
- Strengthening of Europe's human capital base in R&I
- Increase in Europe's attractiveness as a leading destination for R&I
- Better quality R&I contributing to Europe's competitiveness and growth
Do you want to advance your career as a researcher in ICT and have access to top class training and development opportunities? Do you want to gain international and inter-sectoral recognition and develop new ICT products and services? Have you recently finished your PhD and would like to continue your ICT studies into a post-doc level? Then this is a great opportunity for you to become a leader in ICT and help drive the innovation and standards agenda.
ELITE-S is a European research initiative to train and develop the next generation of ICT leaders in Europe. Participation in ELITE-S calls offers candidates several unique benefits:
- Candidates are free to define the content of their proposal according to their own research interests within the research topics below.
- You will be a part of a team of researchers from 6 top Irish Host Institutions.
- Robust research and training programme to enhance your skills and employability.
- Widen your international network creating significant long term impact.
- Address EU priorities: 5G, Internet of Things, cloud computing, cybersecurity and data technologies.
- Competitive salary and benefits
The programme is based at the ADAPT Centre (DCU) and will offer 16 prestigious two-year fellowships for incoming mobility to Ireland across two calls over the 60 months’ duration of the programme. Fellowships will be targeted to experienced researchers (ER) and will be offered in the 28 technology and application areas:
- RegTech
- 5G
- Cybersecurity
- Data Technologies
- Security
- Trust and e-Signatures
- Machine Learning
- Semantic Web
- Long Term Data Preservation
- Data Governance
- IT Service Management
- Data Quality and Master Data
- Cloud Computing
- Internet of Things
- Open and Big Data
- Interoperability
- Data and Process management
- Content Analytics and Preservation
- Regulations and Compliance
- Digital Health
- Digital Government
- Digital Content
- FinTech
- PayTech
- Manufacturing
- Smart Cities
- Smart Buildings
- Smart Transport
Projects in these areas can speed up digitisation and have an immediate impact on competitiveness in domains such as eHealth, intelligent transport systems and connected/automated vehicles, smart homes and cities, and advanced manufacturing. If you have a project in one of these areas, we would like to hear from you!
About the ADAPT Centre
The ADAPT Centre, funded by Science Foundation Ireland focuses on developing next generation digital technologies that transform how people communicate by helping to analyse, personalise and deliver digital data more effectively for businesses and individuals. ADAPT researchers are based in four leading universities: Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University, University College Dublin and Technological University Dublin. ADAPT's transformative tools allow you explore video, text, speech and image data in a natural way across languages and devices, helping companies unlock opportunities that exist within digital content to re-imagine how to connect people, process and data to realise new economic value.
More information here