Procedure and Selection
1. The call for proposal submissions is open until the 12th of October 2023.
2. Proposals should be submitted here.
3. The proposal must consist of a single PDF document. The applicants must provide the following items:
a) Name and affiliation.
b) The state of the art of their field of interest and the question(s) they want to address in their proposal (maximum of 3.000 characters, including spaces).
c) Summary of the experiments they want to perform using the funding and how it will help them to answer their scientific questions (maximum of 3.000 characters, including spaces).
d) Budget indicating how the €2.000 will be spent on consumables.
e) Two letters, one from the PhD/Postdoc supervisor and the other from the collaborative Group Leader/Head of Facility, confirming their support for the application and compliance with ethics regulations. These letters should state the following:
" I [Name of PI/Collaborator] support the application of [Name of applicant] to the SymbNET research exchange program. The research to be developed at [Name of Institute] within the scope of this program complies with all national and European ethical and safety rules. The Laboratory/Facility where the project will be developed follows all national and European ethical and safety rules, and all licenses required for experimentation have been acquired. [date] and [signature]”.
This statement must be filled, even if the project does not raise ethical questions or licenses are required.
4. Eligibility requirements will be verified by the task leader (Philipp Engel, UNIL) with the support from the Project Manager (Mariana Simões, FCG-IGC) and the Project Coordinator (Luís Teixeira, FCG-IGC).
5. Each proposal will be evaluated by three Postdocs together with three of the five SymbNet PIs contributing to this task: Philipp Engel (UNIL); Isabel Gordo (FCG-IGC); Isabel Abreu (ITQB NOVA); Michael Zimmermann (EMBL); and Thomas Bosch (CAU). The two SymbNet PIs from the institute involved in the exchange will be excluded. The Postdocs will be selected by the three SymbNet PIs involved in the evaluation. The evaluation of each SymbNet PI/Postdoc couple consists of a half-page text summarizing the strengths and weaknesses of the proposal. The three reports will be discussed among the three Postdocs and three PIs to come to a final decision.
6. Reviewers from research groups or services involved in the application will be excluded from the evaluation process.
7. Reviewers will be asked if they have any conflict of interest (COI), as described here. Those who declare such COI will be excluded from the evaluation process.
8. Selection will be based on:
a) The relevance of the question being addressed (is the proposal addressing an important topic in the scientific areas represented in SymbNET?).
b) The scientific strength of the proposal (are the experiments proposed well designed and able to address the scientific question?).
d) The Added value of the collaborative project to the PhD/Postdoc research.
9. The decision for submitted projects will be communicated by the end of October.
10. The evaluation process will be coordinated by the SymbNET project manager.
Conflicts of interest (Selection committee)*
- The following conflict of interests must be declared and prevent from being part of the selection committee:
- Having a personal relationship with the candidate or with his/her supervisor or collaborator;
- Having a significant past or ongoing academic relationship with the candidate; this includes having jointly published a research paper in the last five years;
- Having a current or planned close scientific collaboration with the candidate;
- Having commercial/financial interests in relation to the candidate/proposal;
- Having been involved in the preparation of the proposal;
- Benefitting directly or indirectly from the acceptance or rejection of the proposal/candidate;
- Being in any other situation that could cast doubt on the evaluator’s ability to evaluate the proposal impartially, or that could reasonably appear to do so in the eyes of an external third party.