Individual Fellowships is one of the types of Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions aimed to enhance creative and innovative potential of experienced researchers, wishing to diversify their individual competence in terms of skill acquisition through international and intersectoral mobility.
Types of fellowships: European Fellowships – EF; Global Fellowships – GF.
- European Fellowships (EF) are classified as follows:
- Career Restart Panel (CAR) provides financial support for the researchers, wishing to resume research in Europe after a career break, e.g. after parental leave; a mandatory requirement is that researcher must not have been active in research for at least 12 months immediately prior to the deadline for submission.
- Reintegration Panel (RI) is opened only for researchers from EU Member States or Associated Countries; it is provided for scientists who will work in Europe for extended periods; it is supported via a separate multi-disciplinary reintegration panel.
- Standard European Fellowship.
- Society and Enterprise Panel provides support for projects in non-academic sector.
-
Global Fellowships (GF) are based on a secondment to a third country (complying with the rules of mobility) and has mandatory return phase to a European host institution (from EU Member States or Associated Countries). The duration of return phase is 12 months.
Target audience: Experienced and talented researchers with doctoral degree or with at least four years experience of research work (full-time equivalent). There are no restrictions on country of residence or nationality.
Participation conditions:
- The consortium has not to be created. The beneficiary (legal person established in EU Member States or Associated Countries that accepts researcher during the project implementation) will get support. The beneficiary in Society and Enterprise Panel has to be from non-academic sector.
- The project proposal should be submitted by host organization (scientific advisor/ curator of the host institution jointly with the researcher/applicant). The choice of research topics shall be conducted by scientific advisor/curator of the host institution jointly with the applicant.
- According to research topics project proposals may be submitted to one of eight evaluation panels: Chemistry (CHE), Social Sciences and Humanities (SOC), Economic Sciences (ECO), Information Science and Engineering (ENG), Environment and Geosciences (ENV), Life Sciences (LIF), Mathematics (MAT) and Physics (PHY).
- A Career Development Plan should also be established jointly and should comprise description of research activities at the researcher's training and career needs, including training, planning for publications and participation in conferences.
- The mandatory requirement is international mobility (cross-sectoral mobility is also supported).
- Mobility requirements:
for Standard European Fellowship researchers may not have resided or carried out their main activity in the country of their host organisation for more than 12 month in the 3 years immediately before the reference date;
for Career Restart Panel researchers may not have resided or carried out their main activity in the country of their host organisation for more than 36 month in the 5 years immediately before the reference date.
EU contribution: The funding will get host organization (usually, the organisation from European countries). The funding covers living allowance, travel allowance, family allowance, research work expanses, overhead. The beneficiary must recruit each eligible researcher under an employment contract or 'equivalent direct contract' with full social security coverage (including sickness, parental, unemployment and invalidity benefits, pension rights, benefits in respect of accidents at work and occupational diseases) except where national legislation prohibits this possibility. When an employment contract cannot be provided, the beneficiary must recruit the researcher under a 'fixed-amount fellowship'. In this case, the living allowance will be halved and the beneficiary must ensure that the researcher enjoys minimum social security coverage. The yearly reference rates for calculating the living allowance (minus all compulsory deductions under national legislation) for experienced researchers (IF): 55 800 EUR/year
The maximum duration of the project: equals fellowship duration (1-2 years).
The maximum duration of the secondment (may be completely used or split into several stays) depends on fellowship duration:
- three months when the duration of fellowship is ≤ 18 months.
- six months when the duration of fellowship is > 18 months.
Host organisation: universities, research centres, companies (SMEs), and other non-academic institutions.
Research topics — are arbitrary (excluding topics specified in the Euratom Agreement).
Expected Impact:
at researcher level:
- increased set of skills, both research-related and transferable ones, leading to improved employability and career prospects both in and outside academia;
- in the long term perspective – increase more knowledge and ideas converted into products and services;
- greater contribution to the knowledge-based economy and society;
at organisation level:
- enhanced cooperation;
- better transfer of knowledge;
- boosting of capacity among participating organisations;
at system level:
- increase in international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral mobility of researchers in Europe;
- strengthening of Europe's human capital base and better trained researchers;
- better communication of R&I results to society;
- better quality research and innovation contributing to Europe's competitiveness and growth.