Final Report Summary - TRAIN 2009 (Training through Research Application Italian INitative 2009)
TRAIN was aimed at promoting the development of international mobility in order to accelerate interaction between basic research and industry in favor of competitiveness and innovation in a field with a strong social and economic impact. The multidisciplinary nature of TRAIN could contribute to accelerating the transition from discovery to application, while also encouraging solidarity towards the new generations who represent the future of our society. Because TRAIN was a mobility program open to both Italian and foreign scientists, it could represent a good starting point to encourage a fruitful exchange of researchers and clinicians among Comprehensive Cancer Centers operating both in Europe and in third countries.
The 5 years programme started in February 2011 and, despite the initial delay in setting up a novel scheme, the first call for proposals was launched in May 2011.
During the course of the project we had to face several unexpected problems that forced us to revise our strategy and adopt a much more flexible policy on several levels. Nonetheless, TRAIN succeeded in launching 3 calls for 2 years fellowships and we eventually awarded 11 fellows (4 from the first call, 1 from the second call, 67 from the third call).
On the whole, the overall accomplishment of the TRAIN project revealed that, despite the critical aspects we had to face, we could support and give opportunity to excellent young researchers to develop projects whose final outcomes were very high quality research.
TRAIN website address is: www.trainoncology.eu.
List of host organisations;
Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Roma, ITALIA
Università degli Studi di Bari, Bari, ITALIA
IFOM Fondazione – Istituto FIRC di Oncologia Molecolare, Milano, ITALIA
IOR Istituto Oncologico di Ricerca – EOC Istituto Oncologico della Svizzera Italiana, Bellinzona, SVIZZERA
Università degli Studi di Trento, Trento, ITALIA
Princess Margaret Hospital , University Health Network, Toronto, CANADA