× Overall coordination and monitoring of budgets and human resources, in particular composition of the conference team, including hiring of the project leader (Karine Briand) and composition of a steering committee comprising the organisers Karine Briand and Ulrike Kohl, both FNR Luxembourg, the EU Commission Representatives Daniel Göhring and Arya-Marie Ba Trung, external experts Dr Beate Scholz (SCT Bonn Germany) and Dr Conor O'Carroll (Independent consultant and head of the Steering Group on Human Resources, Dublin, Ireland), a representative from the Luxembourg Ministry of Higher Education and Research Josiane Entringer, as well as a representative from the Luxembourg National Contact Point for MSCA Katharina Horst, Luxinnovation.
The tasks further comprised:
Planning with the event agency concerning the conference visuals and the logo
Organisation of the MSCA Award Ceremony /Gala dinner
Elaboration of the conference programme and publication on the website www.msca2015.lu
A call for programme contributions, based on predefined themes for the conference working groups, was launched internationally, targeting in particular the coordinators of COFUNDed Schemes, representatives from European research funding bodies (Science Europe, representatives of national agencies, researchers, researchers’ interest groups or associations (Eurodoc, EUA, VITAE, LERU, etc);
The selection of the conference contributions was done by the steering committee in September 2015, followed by the invitation and booking arrangements with keynote speakers.
The conference programme was finalised in October 2015 and published on the website www.msca2015.lu.
The conference logistical organisation itself was partially sub-contracted to an event agency (venues set up / catering), although registration of participants via the website and overall organisational issues (including accomodations/ social and cultural programme ) has been arranged by the FNR.
A specific part of the conference has concerned the MSCA-FNR Awards based on a call for recommendations to COFUNDed schemes that were selected under EU FP7 calls from 2008 to 2010. The selection of awardees through a selection panel assisted by remote experts was organised by the FNR. Among 19 suggested fellows for the award, 7 were preselected and 3 were finally retained for the Award, during a panel meeting on 2nd November 2015. Expert panel members were renowned scientists: Prof. Rudi Balling, LCSB Luxembourg, Prof. Susanne Siebentritt, University of Luxembourg, and Prof. Claudine Moulin, University of Trier.
The FNR was producing three films of the Award winners: Dr Julien Meyer, CNRS GIPSA Laboratory in Grenoble, France, Dr. Aiden Doherty, University of Oxford, and Prof. David Hoey, Trinity College Dublin (for details concerning the awardees, see msca2015.lu/awardees ). The Awards ceremony was organised by the FNR while the logistical organisation of the ceremony was sub-contracted to the event agency Shine-A-Light.
