That the Italian young scientists were thriving for new funding opportunities was made clear by the European Research Council stats report on the geographic distribution of applications submitted to the first Start-Up Grants call, last April. When funding applications were ranked by country of residence, Italy scored first (1,700 applications out of a total of about 9,000) followed by the UK and Germany. Full stats here
After Stage 1 evaluation of proposals, applications from the UK outpaced those from Germany, France, the Netherlands, with Italy in the 5th place.
This largely acclaimed funding EU scheme is just about to be followed-up by a new initiative approved by the Italian parliament last week. 81M Euros are about to be assigned to the best peer-reviewed project proposals that will be submitted by scientists below 40 years of age. The international evaluation panel, also to be made up by junior scientists below 40, will be composed of 5 scientists who are active in Italian laboratories, and 5 scientists from laboratories abroad. This is completely unprecedented in my homeland.
The member of parliament behind this funding call is Senator Ignazio Marino whose many initiatives are summarized and updated on his website
For those of you who cannot read in Italian, here are a couple of facts, which I will update as we all learn better.
- Total Funds allocated: 81 Million Euros
- Call Date: within the next 60 days
- Deadline for submission of proposals: 45 days after the call date
- Evaluation Committee: 10 scientists of Italian or any other nationality, 5 of which active in Italian labs.
That the evaluators must be below 40 years of age is, perhaps, a double-edged sword. Arguably, this is an extreme remedy to the problem of senior Italian scientists impeding on the career development of the younger scientists. On the other hand, it is tough to exclude a priori mature and excellent senior scientists from the evaluation procedure.
Well, I am 34 and ambitious, so I won’t sit and watch. For those of you who will make it, I hope to meet you by the Spanish Steps for a Cappuccino one day.
Up-to-date news soon.
Arrivederci,
Massimo
Good luck Max.
I still cannot believe that something like this is happening in Italy. Are things really changing? I’ll follow it up and very much look forward to see what happens in the future years. I hope it will not all end up “irradiating something vegetable”
Hi Peppe,
I don’t think that things are going to change overnight, but it does look like something is happening at the level of opportunities for young scientists. Whether this can translate, in the years to come, in a consolidated opportunity of transition to tenure, is a more difficult issue. But, at the very least, the quality of non-tenured research may be improving thanks to these initiatives. So one may really start thinking of doing a post-doc in Italy, a possibility that is now more fueled by personal/family matters than scientific excellence.
Ciao Massimo …
Finally, eventually, unbelievably, after nearly three years of living in Rome, a positive outlook on research possibilities in Italy !!!! It’s a small miracle … a first !!! To be honest, I don’t try to keep abreast of developments in the politics of Italian research funding, but your blog entries have nicely distilled out the essence of these grants, offers and arguments. It’s encouraging and interesting to see such funding opportunities arising for young researchers here, but is it a go-er or just some political carrot dragged along by a tired senator ??? We’ll wait and see I guess ……
Kevin
Ha! Hi Kevin,
thanks for such an enthusiastic response, making me feel like what I am researching and writing about is going to help someone. I guess you had no alternative since you sit 20 metres away from me and I would have forced you to write a (positive) comment to my new blog, huh? Just kidding, of course.
I agree with you on being cautious about unleashing enthusiasm, but the senator behind this is a nice guy. Not tired yet, that I am certain. I am just as hopeful as you are.