UNA Europa, an alliance of universities FOR the emergence of talent and the development of research CAREERs

Project Information

UNA4CAREER

Grant agreement ID: 847635

DOI

10.3030/847635

EC signature date 8 May 2019

Start date 1 November 2020

End date 31 July 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 8 827 200,00

EU contribution

€ 4 413 600,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - UNA4CAREER (UNA Europa, an alliance of universities FOR the emergence of talent and the development of research CAREERs)

Reporting period: 2020-11-01 to 2022-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

UNA4CAREER is the acronym of "UNA Europe, an alliance of universities FOR the emergence of talent and the development of research CAREERS". It is a recruitment program for postdoctoral researchers led by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) and co-funded by the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND Actions.

UNA4CAREER is a multi-year fellowship program that aims to attract 40 experienced researchers through two competitive international calls. Researchers hired through the program will join UCM in one of its research groups classified as excellent (according to the external classification carried out by the Spanish national agency in charge of evaluating research quality). The program is open to any research topic that fits with that of UCM's excellent groups and will be classified into four areas of knowledge: Humanities, Health, Social Sciences and Experimental Sciences.

The UNA4CAREER program aims to enable fellows to broaden their skills in order to improve their employability in both academic and non-academic sectors through the completion of secondments. UNA4CAREER will also encourage researchers to develop a professional career with a true European dimension, including complementary training in research and transferable skills.

As a program built on the principles of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, the essential elements of the projects to be funded in order for the program to achieve the aforementioned aims must be interdisciplinarity, intersectoriality and internationality. In this sense, UNA4CAREER is structured on the Una Europa Alliance of which UCM is a member: The universities participating in this Alliance will contribute to facilitate that funded projects can include these elements by offering research groups and non-academic entities associated with them willing to host researchers for long-term research stays (secondments). Alliance members will also be able to contribute to the program by providing fellows with an expanded offer of training opportunities in transversal competencies.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the first two years of the programme, efforts have been mainly directed towards implementing the two planned calls and recruiting the 40 researchers selected as a result of these calls.

In this sense, abundant documentation has been generated to support the participants and the evaluators who have participated in the evaluation of the applications, and great efforts have been invested in developing a web portal for the programme, as well as IT tools (web applications) to manage both the application submission process and the evaluation process and management of panels of evaluators.

Likewise, a significant amount of work has been carried out to disseminate the calls announced in numerous specialised media, scientific journals and social networks.

The entire evaluation process has been carried out following the principles established in the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions. A total of 218 international experts participated as evaluators of the programme.

The following is a summary of some data on participation in the UNA4CAREER postdoctoral fellowship programme:
Number of fellows per gender: 22 men and 18 women.
Number of fellows per knowledge area: 18 in experimental sciences, 8 in social sciences, 10 in humanities and 4 in health.
Fellows from 14 different nationalities have incorporated to the UNA4CAREER programme: Argentina, Brazil, France, Georgia, Iran, Italy, Pakistan, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Tunisia and United Kingdom.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The main expected outcome at the program level is that the UNA4CAREER fellows can enhance their individual competencies by acquiring not only technical or academic skills (thanks to the possibility of carrying out teaching activities during their projects) but also transversal skills thanks to the interdisciplinary nature of the projects and the international and intersectoral mobility fostered by the program.

The exposure of the fellows to excellent professional environments, not only in the scientific or technical field, but also in the non-academic field, through the completion of the planned secondments at institutions other than UCM, is an important driver in achieving the above-mentioned result.

With their projects the UNA4CAREER fellows will be able to take a step forward in their career and take on new challenges in research. UNA4CAREER will help them to be better prepared to face the challenges of the changing society in which we live.

UNA4CAREER MTM