30 ESRs have been recruited. The doctoral candidates, except one of them, have successfully defended their theses and the last cohort is, because of the delay due to the Covid-19 pandemic, expected to do so in 2022. The measurable results and milestones therefore pertain mostly to the evaluation of submitted research projects and applications and selection processes.
Objective #1, “Reinforcing scientific Excellence of AMU on the selected interdisciplinary research topics, namely ‘Imaging’; ‘Nano-Health’; ‘Big data’; ‘Network’, ‘Climate change’ and ‘Globalization’”, has been partly attained: the selected thesis projects all fall under one of the thematic axes, except for the “Globalisation” axis for which very few projects were submitted and which were not retained at the end of the selection process.
Objective #2, “Attracting young talented international ESRs in Aix-Marseille willing to follow a high standard interdisciplinary Doctoral Programme”, has been fully attained with the recruitment of the 30 ESRs among which 27 are international coming from 17 different countries in Europe, Middle East, Asia and America.
Objective #3, “Enhancing skills of ESR including transferrable ones to maximise their professional integration either in academic or non-academic sectors”, has been fully attained.
Objective #4, “Upgrading AMU Doctorate’s curriculum, aiming at generalizing the innovative Doctorate Principles set up in DOC2AMU as a standard for all Doctoral training in AMU” and Objective #5 “Reinforcing AMU capacities to host talented international researchers in high standard working and improved employment conditions”, have been fully attained.
Objectives #6, "Intensifying the cooperation and the alignment of AMU human resources (HR) practices between key regional academic and non-academic research and innovation players", has been fully attained.
Objective #7, “Develop new synergies and new public/private partnerships in the regional territory”, has also been fully attained. DOC2AMU thesis projects have permitted the creation of 15 new partnerships between AMU research teams and non-academic actors.
Objective #8 “Strengthening the innovative and international aspects of the existing Regional Doctoral programme by systematically implementing “3I” Doctorates and spreading HR and training good practices in other Universities and Research organisations in PACA” was attained partly as many researchers from research organisations in PACA (CNRS and INSERM namely) were part of the thesis projects. However, the other Universities of the region were not concerned since they were not selected in any thesis project.
Objectives #9 "Prioritizing research projects focusing on the regional RIS3 strategies to create a regional leverage effects in terms of knowledge and innovation, multiplying the collaborations between AMU academic partners and the regional clusters on the long term", has been fully attained.
