Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Europe Research Links

Today I attended a workshop on research collaboration between Australia and Europe. My impression was that in the areas I work in it's probably pretty hard to get funded by the European Union. Ironically, it seemed that if you have specific expertise about Australia you are more likely to be able to join a funded project. 2/3 of EU funding goes to FP-7 (Framework Program 7) "Cooperation" projects which are large across country projects that were described as being similar to the ARC's Linkage Program. Other programs seemed to direct more attention to early career researchers. Australian success in the counterpart to ARC's Discovery (ERC) was apparently zero. As was Australian success in the social sciences and humanities area of "Cooperation".

Anyway, one easy thing to do is to nominate yourself as an international expert to assess grant proposals for the EU. It took me half an hour to submit my information on the CORDIS website. If selected they will pay you for your time and bring you to Brussels for a short period for the assessment panel. I thought it was worth a shot given the minimal upfront cost. If you are interested in more information on research collaboration with Europe visit the FEAST website, which is the Australian portal to everything European researchwise.

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