Martí i Franquès COFUND

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MFP (Martí i Franquès COFUND)

Okres sprawozdawczy: 2019-02-01 do 2022-09-30

In 2017, with the COFUND funding, the URV proposes a revamped doctoral management programme for 50 PhD fellowships, offered in 2 calls (2017, 2018), that aligns the existing doctoral programme to the requirements of the European Charter and Code, and provides much improved employment and working conditions to the best doctoral candidates around the world.
The MFP starts by offering one of the best salary at European level for early stage researchers, a transparent, open, merit-based, impartial and equitable selection process and provides equal opportunities for all candidates. In fact, the participation of the latter is encouraged by reserving 2 positions for candidates with disabilities.
Finally 46 candidates were recruited, from which 40% are women researchers.
First and foremost, the main goal of the MFP was to train the recruited doctors, and for this, provided the most innovative training programme. At the end of the MFP programme, the training pilot in transversal skills was included in the permanent offer of courses at URV.
Part of the successful strategy was also the secondment to an international institution. The last part of the MFP programme took place during the COVID-19 pandemic and the situation in Spain was extremely difficult, however, even in these conditions, 40 of the fellows managed to implement their secondment.
As a manifest to our initial forecast, for now 31 fellows defended their PhD thesis, and at this moment, we are confident that the remaining fellows will also defend the thesis. Due to the disruptions created by the COVID-19, some of the fellows needed more time to finalize their research work. Based on the positive experience of the MFP programme, not just for the fellows but also for URV, we expect that participation of international students in our doctoral programmes will strongly increase, which combined with the employment and working conditions offered, will make our university a highly desirable employer in the region.
The quality of the training programme guaranteed the generation of very high skilled professionals at the end of the programme. Based on the data gathered up to now, the work position of 5 fellows is related with the non-academic field, 15 fellows remained in Spain and 10 are working internationally. These specifics are in line with the general output from MSCA projects, according to the latest surveys.
The MFP generated a lot of visibility for our university, also through the research results produced and their dissemination and exploitation, a catalyst of new and important collaborations for future research opportunities.

There was a great responsibility for our project to deliver on the principles of transparency, equal opportunity, fair selection processes, training and career improvement
Actions taken:

1. publication of the calls and dissemination of the projects, in order to attract a large number of candidates, to Euraxess, various job portals etc.
2. development of a brand-new application/evaluation software, where the entire process is completed online, that allowed equitable selection and evaluation of candidates
3. development of a brand-new evaluation process, using evaluators that were recruited via Euraxess (all of them external to the URV, with no conflicts of interest, and remunerated for their work)
4. development of a new recruitment process at institution level, where we involved the MFP management team, the Human Resources service, the Economic service, the Doctoral School and the Research Support Service
5. providing equal opportunities: two reserved positions for researchers with special-needs (1 in each call). Personalized support was provided from the MFP Management Team, their supervisors and the institution. For one of the fellows, two Special-Need Allowances, were awarded, due to the especially difficult condition she has.
6. for each candidate, the availability of research costs budget each year
7. after the selection of the candidates, they received institutional support for their travel documentation, including residence permits and VISAs, as well as accommodation and local support for paperwork documentation
8. after the start of their contracts, a comprehensive dissemination and communication campaign was started creating a strong societal impact . To this purpose, we have employed a communications manager. The fellows were actively involved in different outreach activities, with a strong participation in the European Researchers’ Night during 4 editions. 105 Open Access papers stemmed from the research work done by the fellows, tackling 16 Sustainable Development Goals.
9. exploitation of research results: 10 research exploitable results have been published on the Horizon Results Platform. Two of the fellows are partial owners of patents at URV, stemming from their research work in their PhD thesis. The further exploitation of the research results in the MFP programme is still on-going and is managed by the URV Foundation. The URV as a public university and, as an entity based on knowledge, it has the responsibility to create, transfer and exploit this know-how for the benefit of society
10. a pilot for transversal skills training courses has been started and paid by the MFP project, where specific courses were developed for the MFP fellows, but offered also to the whole URV PhD Community. After the pilot ended, the courses were included in the Institute of Science Education permanent offer as training for all the research community at URV.
11. flexibility during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through this new and complicated situation for all of us, the Management Team offered extra support to fellows and various actions were taken for the best functioning of the programme such as extension of contracts, on-line secondments, on-line training courses.
12. on-site and online meeting were held between the fellows and the Management Team to ensure the well-being, collaboration, strengthening the sense of belonging to the MFP COFUND community. Regular meetings were held also for PhD supervisors. We also ensured the programme’s visibility at national, regional and European level, through participation at events and meetings.

Several projects that were selected for funding have great societal implications. The research work deals with nutrition and health, with smart cities, circular economy, all these topics being focus areas in the H2020 programme. There are several projects that are linked to the FEDER programme for territory development (in the area of nutrition, economy, health).
Considering the regional impact, the MFP-COFUND research has also contributed to the urban improvement of the Camp de Tarragona, drafted guides on educational technology for teachers of young children and students of Educational Sciences and Psychology at the URV, and increased the competitiveness of the Costa Daurada and Terres de l’Ebre as family tourist destinations via a project on healthy eating and mobile applications. One of the projects explores the impact of specialization in Cultural and Creative Industries on total employment growth in Catalonia and another, advanced knowledge in prenatal and postnatal elements in local Reus-Tarragona Birth Cohort.
The active collaboration with research institutes in the area “Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology” and “Catalunya La Pedrera Foundation” brings an extended impact for the MFP-COFUND at regional level.

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