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.
