Madrid, February 13, 2019.- The European Commission (CE) has decided to provide co-financing of up to 4.4M€ for a new programme of postdoctoral contracts of the Complutense University of Madrid, which has been given the name UNA4CAREER. This co-financing lies within the framework of the H2020-MSCA-COFUND-2018 call, itself within the programme of Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions (MSCA), of Horizon 2020.

The principles of the programme will be transnational mobility and the development of the research career through interdisciplinarity and intersectorality within the framework of the recently created network of universities UNA Europa, in which the UCM participates.

The MSCA-COFUND call is a co-funding mechanism that aims to stimulate regional, national or international researcher recruitment programmes, promoting excellence in researcher training, mobility and career development. It is a highly competitive call, in line with the rest of the Horizon 2020 calls. In 2017, only 17% of MSCA-COFUND proposals were funded.

The UNA4CAREER project, whose sole beneficiary is the Complutense University of Madrid, will be a multi-year programme for the incorporation and training of researchers, open to experienced researchers, in which scientific excellence and transnational mobility will prevail. Those researchers recruited will be required not to have worked or resided in Spain for more than 12 months in the three years prior to the closing date of their call.

The incorporation of postdocs into UNA4CAREER will take place through one of the 94 excellence groups of the UCM. As an added value, the integration with the UNA Europa alliance will guarantee the possibility of developing interdisciplinary and intersectoral research secondments in one of the member universities or institutions of UNA Europa.

The total budget of this project will be € 7.4 million for two calls, each one with 20 contracts. The contracts will have a duration of 36 months. 3M€m of this budget will come from the UCMs already existing programme of postdoctoral contracts (0.5M€ / year and call) and the rest, 4.4M€, will be subsidized by the EC through the above-mentioned H2020-MSCA-COFUND-2018 call.

In this way, UNA4CAREER will substantially improve the salary conditions of the current postdoctoral program at the UCM, boosting the attraction of talent and allowing its effective internationalization. This program will allow participating researchers to broaden their transversal competencies and improve their employability, as well as to access career development opportunities with a European dimension.

For the Complutense University, UNA4CAREER will be an opportunity to strengthen international, inter-sectoral and interdisciplinary collaboration among all participating organizations, through the development of postdoctoral contract stays, as well as through joint activities, such as dissemination.

UNA4CAREER, as an open network that will allow 40 researchers to combine their work in an international (6 countries), inter-sectoral (possibility to interact with more than 500 actors across UNA Europa) and interdisciplinary (4 scientific areas) framework, will definitely help to disseminate the best practices of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions.

The UCM is currently immersed in the process leading to the signing of the grant agreement with the EC, so the UNA4CAREER programme is expected to start in the coming months.

This whole initiative was begun by the UCM Scientific Policy, Research and Doctorate, International Relations and Cooperation and Knowledge Transfer and Entrepreneurship vice-rectorate. The presentation of the proposal to the corresponding H2020 call has been articulated through the European R&D Office and has been designed in the context of the European network UNA Europa, of which the UCM is a member.

UNA Europa, inspired by the European Universities Initiative of the EC, is currently composed of the Universidad Complutense of Madrid; the Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna (Italy); the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (France); the KU Leuven (Belgium); the Freie Universität Berlin (Germany); the Uniwersytet Jagielloński (Poland), and the University of Edinburgh (Scotland, United Kingdom).