Final Report Summary - BP (Post-doctoral programme Beatriu de Pinos)
The Beatriu de Pinòs project (BP) is a four year international mobility postdoctoral programme, co-funded by the European Commission under the Marie Curie COFUND action. The BP programme aims to provide highly talented researchers (up to seven years of postdoctoral experience) the opportunity to increase their trans-national mobility and advance their career development. It fosters to increase the dimension of the Catalan research and innovation system by attracting the best researchers worldwide. The programme is implemented under two mobility schemes:
BP-A Outgoing mobility: reinforces the international dimension of the career of researchers with a doctoral degree from a Catalan University by giving them the opportunity to be trained and acquire new knowledge in a high-level entity established in another EU/associated country or third country for a period of 24 months with the possibility of a 12 month return phase to an organisation located in Catalonia.
BP-B incoming mobility: supports career development by enabling researchers from all nationalities the opportunity to train and conduct an independent research career in a Catalan institution for a period of 24 months.
The BP Programme is open to all researchers, regardless of their nationality, and has a bottom-up approach both for fundamental and more applied research. Researchers freely choose a research topic and a research institution according to their individual career development needs. The selection of the fellows is merit-based, founded on peer review in an open and transparent selection procedure. The research training has to be carried out in a different country from where the applicant has been principally working less than 12 months in the 2 years preceding the beginning of the postdoctoral funding period. Besides the scientific research training, researchers also receive additional training in complementary skills.
The Beatriu de Pinós Programme (outgoing and incoming schemes) has been running since 2005. The Cofunding action for the 2010 and 2011 calls has strengthened the BP programme by improving the researchers careers conditions, extending the outgoing scheme with a return phase of one year and increasing the number of incoming fellowships. The overall BP project has granted 76
postdoctoral researchers resident in Catalonia to travel abroad and develop their fellowships in 15 different countries. USA has been the most common destination with more than 27% of the fellows, followed by France and UK with approximately 15%. Moreover, 54 researchers from 9 nationalities have been granted positions in the Catalan research system (incoming modality). A vast majority of them have been Spanish researchers while Italian researchers constituted the second nationality in number of grants with around 13%, followed by France with more than 5%.
The BP project has succeeded in achieving its goals and has had a favourable impact on upgrading the quality of junior postdoctoral reserachers in Catalonia. The improvements in the BP programme made through this COFUND project have allowed combating fragmentation of regional programmes by increasing the European-wide mobility possibilities for training and career development of researchers in the European Researh Area.
The programme is managed by AGAUR (the Agency for Management of University and Research grants), the Catalan Government Agency responsible for managing regional grants for universities and research, as well as, promoting research and science. The Agency manages grants amounting to over 151 million EUR per year.
Catalonia and its R&I system provides postdoctorals researchers an attractive environment to deepen scientific skills and develop new ones in a wide range of fields. It is composed by 12 universities, 68 research centres and research hospitals and 9 technological centres, among others. It also comprises large facilities for the development of research and innovation using first level scientific infrastructures such as a new generation Synchrotron, the National Centre for Genomics Analysis or the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, amongst others. Catalonia has been positioned as the 5th region of Europe in terns of research production during the period 2010-2014.
Contact details:
Victoria Miquel i Martí
Passeig Lluís Companys, 23, 08010 Barcelona
Telf: 93 310 21 37; E-mail: vmiquel@gencat.cat
Webpage: http://agaur.gencat.cat/
See Annex Section 1. List of host institutions.
BP-A Outgoing mobility: reinforces the international dimension of the career of researchers with a doctoral degree from a Catalan University by giving them the opportunity to be trained and acquire new knowledge in a high-level entity established in another EU/associated country or third country for a period of 24 months with the possibility of a 12 month return phase to an organisation located in Catalonia.
BP-B incoming mobility: supports career development by enabling researchers from all nationalities the opportunity to train and conduct an independent research career in a Catalan institution for a period of 24 months.
The BP Programme is open to all researchers, regardless of their nationality, and has a bottom-up approach both for fundamental and more applied research. Researchers freely choose a research topic and a research institution according to their individual career development needs. The selection of the fellows is merit-based, founded on peer review in an open and transparent selection procedure. The research training has to be carried out in a different country from where the applicant has been principally working less than 12 months in the 2 years preceding the beginning of the postdoctoral funding period. Besides the scientific research training, researchers also receive additional training in complementary skills.
The Beatriu de Pinós Programme (outgoing and incoming schemes) has been running since 2005. The Cofunding action for the 2010 and 2011 calls has strengthened the BP programme by improving the researchers careers conditions, extending the outgoing scheme with a return phase of one year and increasing the number of incoming fellowships. The overall BP project has granted 76
postdoctoral researchers resident in Catalonia to travel abroad and develop their fellowships in 15 different countries. USA has been the most common destination with more than 27% of the fellows, followed by France and UK with approximately 15%. Moreover, 54 researchers from 9 nationalities have been granted positions in the Catalan research system (incoming modality). A vast majority of them have been Spanish researchers while Italian researchers constituted the second nationality in number of grants with around 13%, followed by France with more than 5%.
The BP project has succeeded in achieving its goals and has had a favourable impact on upgrading the quality of junior postdoctoral reserachers in Catalonia. The improvements in the BP programme made through this COFUND project have allowed combating fragmentation of regional programmes by increasing the European-wide mobility possibilities for training and career development of researchers in the European Researh Area.
The programme is managed by AGAUR (the Agency for Management of University and Research grants), the Catalan Government Agency responsible for managing regional grants for universities and research, as well as, promoting research and science. The Agency manages grants amounting to over 151 million EUR per year.
Catalonia and its R&I system provides postdoctorals researchers an attractive environment to deepen scientific skills and develop new ones in a wide range of fields. It is composed by 12 universities, 68 research centres and research hospitals and 9 technological centres, among others. It also comprises large facilities for the development of research and innovation using first level scientific infrastructures such as a new generation Synchrotron, the National Centre for Genomics Analysis or the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, amongst others. Catalonia has been positioned as the 5th region of Europe in terns of research production during the period 2010-2014.
Contact details:
Victoria Miquel i Martí
Passeig Lluís Companys, 23, 08010 Barcelona
Telf: 93 310 21 37; E-mail: vmiquel@gencat.cat
Webpage: http://agaur.gencat.cat/
See Annex Section 1. List of host institutions.
