CELSA official website.

CELSA is expected to support 10-12 new collaborative projects between CELSA researchers. Charles University will support two to three projects in this call, and RUK will contribute a maximum of EUR 30,000 to each. RUK does not limit
in any way what can be paid (everything that the researchers in the project agree on), apart from investment costs and refreshments. If you are thinking about submitting a project, we would like to inform you that this year CELSA will organize a matchmaking exercise in order to achieve more effective involvement and increase the number of submitted projects.

Internal procedure – we ask all interested parties to send the budget and project draft no later than Dec 5 2024 to email lotharfilip.rudorfer@ff.cuni.cz.

Terms of elligibility

Each year, CELSA awards one to three CELSA Service to Society Awards.

• the academic worker must be nominated by professors of at least two CELSA member universities;
• the nominee must be an academic worker1 of one of the CELSA consortium members of the university;
• nominees are, in principle, individual persons; exceptionally, the prize may be awarded to a limited number of people.

Conditions

• Any scientific discipline qualifies for funding from the CELSA Research Fund.

• The application is submitted by at least one KU Leuven researcher who meets the conditions of the  Internal Funds General Regulations and at least one researcher from at least one other CELSA partner. Eligibility of  researchers of the CELSA partners must be verified within each CELSA partner, following the specific conditions.

• The project funding can be used freely by the researchers involved, as long as the activities concern research, strengthen the collaboration within the CELSA network, and can lead to a high quality application for any of the European competitive funds as mentioned. Preferably research staff will be appointed on the project’s budget (for KU Leuven: ‘Wetenschappelijk medewerker’ barema 43 of 44 or ‘bursaal’) (‘science worker’, PhD student or postdoc).

• Within 3 years of the start of the project, the applicant consortium (including additional partners) has to jointly apply for a call for proposals for a European competitive funding program, such as a collaborative research project in Horizon Europe (including Marie S. Curie innovative training networks, FET Open, Societal Challenges, …).

Applicants are aware of legal aspects regarding the CELSA collaboration (ownership of results, dissemination of results, access rights, authorship, ethics and research integrity and some specific arrangements). Questions about this can be addressed to the EU support office

Time schedule for the 2023 call for proposals

• Publication call: July 2024

• Deadline for submission: December 2024

• Evaluation of project proposals: December 2024 – May 2025

• Announcement of the results: July 2025

• Start of the projects: October 1st, 2025

The project proposal has to contain the following parts:

• Cover page (max. 1p): title, name, affiliation, and e-mail address of the researchers involved, an indication of who will be the leading scientist of the project (coordinator, either from KU Leuven or a partner university), a non-confidential and public-friendly abstract or summary (max. 2000 characters), and up to 5 key words. Please use this template.

• Attachment 1: the project description (max. 4p): problem statement & objectives, envisaged progress beyond the state of the art, methodology, anticipated results, managerial aspects and timing.

• Attachment 2: Resources (max. 1p): a clear indication of the budget applied for each side (KU Leuven side and partner university side) and the proposed use of the project budget to acquire new resources, linked to the methodology. Please add a description of the available resources (incl. infrastructure and equipment).

• Attachment 3: Added value of the collaboration (max. 1p): description of the consortium of researchers focusing on the added value of the collaboration to the envisaged research activities.

• Attachment 4: Potential towards a future EU funding application (max. 1p): description of the potential towards a future joint application as well as the linkages to a call for proposals of a European research funding program, specifying the future call (e.g. Marie S. Curie network, Horizon Europe focus area or draft call topic, ERA-Net call, cPPP call, …); description of the relevance of the collaboration for that call, program, or European research & innovation policy or focus area (this may include aspects of innovation and potential future impact of the research or collaboration, if relevant in the future European call); proposed timelines and planning towards the future European application (including perhaps specifying types of additional partners outside CELSA required for the collaborative projects); identification of possible third parties and societal and/or industrial stakeholders or possible partners in future EU applications

• Attachment 5: CV of the involved applicants (PI and co-PI’s, not the collaborating researchers) (max. 1p per participating researcher): a short description of the expertise, 5 most important publications relevant to the proposal, an indication of previous (most important) European or international collaborations.