 Ευχαριστώ πολύ για την εμβιτεία, Ιωσέμ, και ελπίζω ότι η εμβιτεία μου θα είναι εύκολη. Έχω μιλήσει ότι last year there have been two proposals approved for UPF, which is a very good score actually. UPF is not a very big university, it's a medium sized university and having two out of the very few proposals approving every year is a very important and very promising score. And a lot of proposals have been of very high level, which means that there is merge to improve this score and have a higher achievement this year and this in this call. So first of all I would like to give you an idea of what the concept is of the Marie Curie. Marie Curie is part of a wider set of programs for the development of European research and the idea is to promote researchers' mobility, training and excellence in Europe. Please note that the important thing here is mobility research and training, mobility and training. Other way you could do this research without moving of your country. The reason for which the European Union pays that is because you are moving out of your country and that you are going to be trained in something that you cannot learn in your country, in your university. Actually there are three things that usually the applicants confuse. One is the research they want to do which is very respectful and very interesting every time but this is not what is going to make you to win. You have to consider what the one who pays for wants to listen and why it is paying so much money for that. Probably it is not only for your research objective which can be very interesting, very reliable but it has some other reasons that wants to spend taxpayers' money in this effort. The third is what the evaluators are going to do, are expecting to see in your proposals and are guided to evaluate in your proposals. So these three aspects are generally sometimes contradicting and in your effort you have to resolve this contradiction taking into account what you really want to do but having always in mind that you will not have the opportunity to do it if you don't persuade the one who pays and the one who evaluates that this works the effort and the money spent on that following his own criteria that are different from yours probably. So just make that emotional part out which is what you really want to do and you have to focus that you have to win in order to do it. That's the basic thing. So the panels that are proposed, you know them following your science I'm not going to guide you through your topics, I'm coming from a domain which is digital applications and research in cultural heritage so that's my field of research and local development but if you have any questions on that I cannot help you if you are in chemistry or it's not my point but the evaluation process is the same for all kind of topics and you can see the main funding, the main spending from the commissions and the main effort is for the standard European fellowships that is what Josep told before it was in 2015 7139 proposals in the overall received in this topic I will come back later about that and the career start is further more limited and also in money available and the integration panel also and the society and enterprise panel has only and it has in the overall 205 million euros available for this for the first panel the society and enterprise panel had I don't see a budget of 10 million euros and 134 proposals in 2015 so I'm moving forward actually you have to think like that me in this case I have 20 to 30 minutes to make your presentation and my objectives are to give you an idea of what Marie Curie fellowships are to explain you the evaluation process of your proposals and the priorities and finally to give some advice if it's worth the effort to participate and sometimes to maximize your chances my objective is not to give you details and the complete training you can evaluate my effort after the end of this presentation I tell you that because you have to enter in this tip in this idea when you are writing your proposal somebody is going to read it you have to make clear from the beginning what your objectives are the first thing that it is asked in the presentation of the general objectives of your project the first thing that an evaluator reads is your objectives so first the objectives have to be relevant and have to be reachable you have to prove that you can and they have to be appealing and they have to present an idea that makes sense and then at the end reading the next paragraphs and the implementation plan and the impact and all what is requested the researcher will evaluate if these objectives are well explained and are persuasively presented in order to be implemented in the project so this is what you have to think about when you are writing your proposal I have participated in about four or five evaluation processes and some additional that are in between in small and this is where my experience is coming from in my field and I am going straight to the criteria as Josep explained before the first thing is the quality and credibility of the research and innovation and the interdisciplinary and gender aspects concerning the research and innovation it has to be good it has to be proven that you know very well what the state of the art is and you have to be clear in your objectives however it has also to be appealing if you put yourself in the place of an evaluator if he reads something that he likes he always will try to find on the back of his head something that is more helpful for you if it is something that inspires he can defend you you will have him on your side he will not ignore the missing things isn't it but he has a merge to push forward or to insist if something is important or less important so you have to win him and this is very important from the beginning of your proposal that sounds appealing it's a good idea the second is that you have to remember that this is mainly not a research but a training project what that means training it means that you have not only to say that I am going to be trained for something but you have to explain why you are going to be trained what you know actually and what additional skills concretely you are going to achieve throughout this training and how you are going to achieve them let me give you an example we have an archaeologist for example who is going to make research in GPS systems and the application in the archaeology for reconstructing ancient sites he has been formed as an archaeologist he has some experience on that and he wants to make a project where he needs some additional informatic skills he has to be clear on that he has to say that I know these things and I want to learn those things those things are offered in the university I am asking to go you have to justify why you are going there and I am going to bring them to this university my experience as archaeologist that I have worked in this kind of specific aspects and the university which I am going to will take advantage also of my experience and then you have to say how you are going to do that you have to be clear that he is going to follow some training courses or it will be hands on training or it will be inside training or that he is going to teach or provide some seminars there it is not sufficient to say that I am going to get these GIS skills you have to be clear and persuasive it means that the university you are going to have also these skills and can offer it to you one of the basic tips is that you have to be concrete the generalities generally are not persuasive and the typical things that we are instructed to write the proposal is not persuasive in that point is not clear enough is not sufficiently detailed and it is not a question of space you do not need a lot of space you need a lot the right words you can write a lot without saying anything but if you say I am going to do three courses of GIS location and I will get these informatics skills you need just half a line or one line but it is clear it is evident and it can be evaluated when you don't say something it is also evaluated silence in specific topics is a point is part of your evaluation second is the quality of the supervision and the integration in the team institution that is something that is also sufficiently clear that you have to talk about and the capacity of the researcher to reinforce the position of professional maturity and independence what that means in your opinion what you imagine on that when somebody says the capacity to research to reach or reinforce the position of professional maturity actually they are not asking you or a psychological profile they are asking you of something very concrete that I am going to improve my general skills and I am going to improve my professional perspectives and I am going to do that that way this is what the evaluator is expecting to read in this precise point the impact I am not going to insist a lot because it has been presented a lot in details from the previous speaker but certainly what you have to insist and that it was very well said is the involvement of the society the European Union is very interested in the involvement of the European society and explaining why to the society not only to the research community why the taxpayers' money are going there you have to go behind the thought of the policy makers and they are very well doing I mean somebody is paying for that so he has to know the involvement of the local communities if your project has this aspect the involvement of the people the media involvement, the social media the press whatever you can imagine that could increase visibility depending of course on your project is a very very important aspect and naturally the involvement of the scientific community and that is not necessary to insist it also has to be quantified I have seen a lot of proposals that they have proposed everything has to be sufficiently quantified that they have proposed activities that are not persuasive because they are not quantified when you say I'm going to make a seminar I'm going to make an open event I'm going to make whatever you are thinking you have to provide some figures how many people will know about that what's the objective what's the community you want to reach the size, the order of magnitude at least of the people and the target audiences and the quality and the efficiency of the implementation plan I will insist that here in a very tricky thing that is the risk management they are insisting a lot in evaluating the risks of the implementation of the project probably there are no risks at all but if any it's important to know not because it will dissuade the people but it will make your proposal more persuasive if somebody thinks of a risk that you have not mentioned it's a minus you can lose one point from that or two if you lose one or two points you can lose your proposal for nothing and there are risks there are people who are using for example data you have to be clear where your data are coming from I have read a lot of proposals that were saying that we are going to use this kind of data but it was not clear if they have access to this data just to give you an example it can be many things I'm going to make a research in a site in an archaeological site or in an environmental site and it is not clear if he is going to have access to this site for various reasons permissies, administrative restrictions weather availability of the data all these are risks that have to be sufficiently persuasively explained to the evaluator to be sure that even if that happens, something happens you have a plan B where you can deal with that in another way Of course you have to talk about the appropriateness of the institutional environment and infrastructure that's not difficult and I'm sure that the services of the university can assist you on that and your supervisor for what you are doing but also here you have to justify why your research fits to that university fits to the infrastructure that are available that gives you points to be more precise I'm not going to insist in the CB and as correctly said, Josep in the eco shock for example you have to reach the zone of 4.525 to all criteria at the upper scale of 95 to 100 in order to get chances to be funded which means that you can have a very good proposal that will not be funded so when we are coming to evaluate a proposal and that's very important to know and this is I'm going to open you a standard example of the individual evaluation reports that an evaluator is receiving is this exactly thing that has to fill in and in each one of the points we need to write something if you do not offer that clearly it's a mess, it makes your life of the evaluator difficult and if he has to look for and he cannot find any justification he will have to write something that probably he will write it under weaknesses and not under strengths so we all write points under two these two main titles so and we need to write something even if the proposal is very good your strengths must be clear and if a weakness appear in the proposal then how it works the three evaluators are looking their weaknesses that each one has found in the proposal and they compare them and then they are talking and they have to find that this is really a weakness or it isn't or probably it is a strength so the first approach is to find any weaknesses as far as you address all the aspects you make more difficult to find weaknesses and each weakness can be 0.1 up to 0.5 depends on the gravity of the thing but if you mark something it has to reflect to your score actually so you see here that there are in each one there is a different criterion for each one sub-criterion that are generally presented before which is for example extent to which the researcher will gain knowledge in the hosting organizations during the fellowship through training extent to which the hosting organization may also benefit from the researcher how the knowledge previously acquired will be transferred to the host organization so this what I told you before are points that the evaluators are called are obliged to answer and you but give them the answers prepared if you want to convince them same applies for the quality of the supervision qualification of experience of the supervisors hosting arrangements and the capacity of the researcher don't forget that the evaluators are also they have their own preferences they are coming from various scientific fields they are not all of the same scientific origin so you have to be sufficiently clear for them to understand what you really want to do and you have to take them on your side not to have them against them you do not have to somehow insult a kind of I don't say insult directly but you don't have to be aggressive in your proposal any against any kind of scientific approach you don't know who you are going to to have as an evaluator it's better to avoid any negative points and insist on your positive points on your proposal I've seen a lot of proposals also with negative points and these bad I don't know organized historians or archaeologists or whatever it's not you have only to lose we have nothing to win insisting in the negative things but to be very positive in the proposal I'm going back to the presentation here you can see the link does not work yes it works as you can see the evaluators they have a kind of merging thing that's a picture of an existing proposal explicitly the name or whatever so you can see how the evaluators are beginning the negotiation before the proposal which is for example the first had 4.2, 4.45 the other 4.5 4.55 and this can end up to a 4.9 it's not necessarily that but it's not the question of who is more persuasive in his aspects and of course they are obliged to negotiate and see clearly if their first opinion was the right one or not and this is for example some of the points that are writing in the first lecture that the supervisor is a top expert in the field and the costing provisions are clearly explained the university has an established track or considering the research objectives is very clearly explained before starting a field work and the research will be trained number of additional skills you see this is what the evaluators are looking for they are directed to this direction so they take also in mind also that they have a very limited time and they have very strong views sometimes and so you have to facilitate them the life you have to put what is under each one of the paragraphs in the paragraphs they have to find it I liked a lot one proposal once and it was a very good proposal I tried to support it because it was a really good proposal but the guy had a lot of information in other places than where it had to go so it made my life very difficult to look for but someone who was not to physically observe but they're doing the dirty Second I have to look over your text to find what this should be in the risk and I I know that I've seen it but it can happen that you can have somebody that is more indifferent in your proposal and if he does not see that under the risk, he's not going to look for it in other places of your proposal. So you have to be very careful to facilitate the life of the one who is in the work of the one who's reading it. So let's go to the statistics and then I would be happy to answer any questions. As you can see, the statistics are not very encouraging in the first year. In the first year, just keep that in mind. Because the number of proposals is very important. It's huge and the funded proposals are far less. You can see here the average estimate of the proposals that are submitted every year. That was 7139. And I will open you the approved ones, which are very low rate if you consider the overall of the proposals. It is here. Sorry, I will need to make it a little bit bigger for you. So you can see here, for example, that in the EcoSoc, there were 197 proposals. We had only, how many are there, about 10. If I count correctly, about 10, 11 approved, which is at 10%. So it is online, this table, you can find it in the site of the Marie Curie in the European Commission. It's the cumulative percentage of proposals that was given a higher score. And you can also see where the approval approximately starts the successful proposal. However, it's not, at the end, no more than 16.8% will find their way to funding in 2014, for example. The rate has not really changed in the next years. However, the real statistics are different. I don't want to disappoint you and discourage you. A small number of proposals is rejected for administrative issues, as you have seen, about 100 in each topic. Another part, which is not insignificant, is below or around the threshold, and that's very important. That's about 30%, 35%. These are not your competitors. There are a lot of people, because it's easy, you can enter, you can put some stuff in. I've seen terrible things, some newspapers, and copy them and you can make a proposal. If you find a rather complacent somehow university, which is not rare, and I have seen that from good universities too, you can put your proposal on. They say we don't have nothing to lose. I don't agree with this approach, because the supervisors and the universities have to lose. They lose of their reputation if they put a lot of trash in the system. That's important. They play there. I will tell you a story. I've seen one proposal that was coming from one very important American institution. It was in the global staff and it was involved on a very important, I don't say the name, but one of the ones that are really very, very known. There was a guy who wanted to make a kind of project that was a study, a musician, a world in kind of art project presenting it as a scientific work. The presentation was really trash. It was nothing. I'm going to do that with no explanations, with anything, without anything. Just like mocking, I don't know. It happened to have one evaluator that was a British guy. He was rather old. He was very insistent and he entered saying that that's a great proposal. That's for five in everything. The other two were looking like what this guy says. That's trash. At the end, finally, we finalized that it was trash because we said that, okay, if you believe that, pay it from your own money, from your salary. I don't think that the European Commission is paying us and you in order to say that this is something that has to be funded. But at the end, there are a lot that are not so bad, but they are just not worked enough or they don't deserve. So these are out of your competitors. There is another 30% that is well enough. It is of the threshold, but it is not to be funded. As you have seen, only the best are funded. So if you want to invest work and be in that trance of the evaluation, I don't recommend it to you. Because you will invest work and you will not get any chances to be funded. This is the vast majority of the proposals. There is a 30% that can be funded that are the best, the best of the best. Which means that only if you really want to make a very good proposal, which means to invest time and effort to address all the criteria to propose something that is consistent, it will take you one or two months of full-time job, full-time work. Then you have chances to be funded. And in this case, you are in the 30%. So your approval chances are about 30%, if you have a very good proposal. These are your competitors. If you don't think to try to do a very good work, you are just losing your time. If you really are decided to do a good work, you have chances. That's my advice. If you submit a trance proposal, you are not going to lose anything. But okay, what for? Except of your dignity probably. This is a train action. You have to prove how to train. Not only you need an adequate supervisor and corresponding institution, but you must prove it. You must prove that you know how to implement your proposal. You need to address all the topics. You need to be positive. However boring they seem to you, don't forget that this is taxpayers' money and you have to persuade that it's worth to be paid. Don't tire the evaluators. Make their life easy to find everything they want. Maximize in all criteria the strengths and no significant weaknesses are allowed for weakness usually. You can have weaknesses, but if you have significant weaknesses in whatever of the criteria, you're not going to be approved. So don't be afraid to have some weaknesses you will have. But if you forget something important, you will lose it. You have to cover all the aspects of the proposal to get it sufficiently. So thank you a lot. You will need also some luck. That's clear. So we open the floor for questions. For those who are in streaming, remember that there is the hashtag MSCA underline UPF. If you have any questions, we can also look at that. And please, any questions is welcome. Well, the first one I saw was over there. I will hand you the microphone. That depends on the kind of your project, but certainly the impact concerning the community is global. This is one part concerning the community, but concerning the scientific impact, you have to persuade that Europe, European research area, will take advantage of the results of your proposal. It will add value to Europe. That's why you are requested to return for 12 months and not to stay where you are going and to develop your career there. It's not to accelerate brain training, but to bring them back. So, yes, for Europe also is a good thing to have a good visibility outside of Europe. But also you have to persuade that somebody in Europe will know about your project. For example, if you are doing an environmental project in Amazon, let's say in Amazonia and you are coming back, it's good to see if I were a evaluator to see how your results will be also spread in Europe and how the local communities here will understand that result. Is there a specification on the regional ranking field? No. They are going in these topics, in these five, in the panels and the budget is going, is split it among the panels but not among the institutions or the countries or... No. If I may. If you are applying to European Fellowship, you will be evaluated, of course, by experts on your topic. Then each panel has its own ranking. Exactly. However, if you are going to career restart or reintegration panels, you are still evaluated by professionals of your topic. However, all the relations are put in the same pot then and just the best ones are funded. So maybe at one year all of them are from humanities or the next year maybe there's no one of them. This is more appropriate because it's an administrative issue, actually. What they use is... If you've been 11 months, which is quite on the border, you should prove that, for instance, using labor contracts or the rental contract of the apartment where you're living in the other country, that you've only been here for 11 months. They are quite specific with that. So if you've been... If you were right here on the 13th September 2016, you've been one year and two days, so you should not be eligible. Then it depends on how good you are at kind of trying to move the date. Yeah. This cannot be proven. This kind of small... But if in your CV appears that you have been there for a contract you were working there, okay, it's obvious. Somebody will see it. If you cross the border, it's not bad. We've had, for example, one case of one person who was from another country and she had a contract in that country but was actually working here. What she did was... She showed her contract for the other university even though she was actually living here. That's kind of tricky things. I mean, we can't help with that, but it's a really personalized topic. Maybe we'll talk later about that. Yeah, and keep in mind that there is an underground always thinking of the evaluators. It's not an official criteria. It depends a lot on how everybody takes it. You see, for example, a proposal of somebody who is from Spain and he has studied here. He spent just the right period to be aware in Germany and then he applies to go back to the same university, to the same place where he has been. Even though it is permitted it makes not so many sense. You have to be very persuasive to make him understand the people that... Okay, he doesn't do that because he wants to go home. But he does it because he really has something to learn there that he cannot learn somewhere else. Okay, so it's not an official evaluation but everybody has that in mind when he reads a proposal. You could have it if you were in the place of the one who was reading it and you were trying to find if this is true or not. So certainly the idea is to be very persuasive why you want to go there. Scientific speaking, professionally speaking it can be an objective, because I have been proposed a place in the university and it will open a position in three years from now if you can be so clear and I want to prepare and be ready to integrate in this position. That's an argument, if it is accompanied by other arguments but you have to be very clear. Information, I was wondering you talked about bottlenecks a few times could you maybe name what that is because I can imagine that that's something that if you don't have experience you don't know that these things can go wrong that you never, for example, listening to the data you want to really think about where it is for you to come from. Yeah, you have to persuade the evaluator that you have all the necessary access to infrastructure or data or whatever is available that depends on your field I don't know your field for example your idea that makes your research feasible that has to be clear and it has to be even quantified I can give you many examples such as guys that they wanted to study for example a number of manuscripts that were split around the world and they had to prove somehow that they have access to these manuscripts or they have an agreement with the museums that they have these manuscripts how they are going to use them it's their IPR issues how they are going to treat with them are they going to make photos just to give you an example in other cases in economic for example proposals I've read they were talking about the development of new indices and that they were going to use data that they are going to collect from local communities and they have access to these data you have to be very persuasive that you have what you are saying to what you are going to do or permission in archaeological site I'm talking for my field thank you you're welcome sorry or just a fitting to the supervisor no the first I didn't need no no to the department to what you are going to use and the supervisor that means the infrastructure of the university if you are going to work in chemistry with Pompeo Fabra you have to say why in chemistry specifically Pompeo Fabra I'm just taking an example has the necessary infrastructures and skills and your supervisor can help you on that and of course there is a part that is the integration in the university the infrastructure that the university offers to the hosts but this is another thing is how it will help you to adapt to the environment how it will help you to be integrated in the city and in these kind of things I think that Pompeo has a very good support for the students and it can be used as a description if I talk more with the NGO with the company and collect information in that company can this work as a second institution of course and it's very good also I forgot to say about this accountments that are very important but they have also to be justified it's not I'm going there and I'm going to make a practice what are you going to do in your practice are you going to be trained are you going to be as you said which is a very good idea I'm going to collect data because they have this data and they are available to give them to me and I'm going to use them in my research so you have the secondment must make sense in your research or in your skills or in both not just mention that I'm going to this company for example and I'm going to be generally accepted and trained without explaining what we are going to do for example in the excellent part when you say that may clear your objectives we should stick to the scientific objectives and not put there for example the social impact that we have as an objective that depends on the kind of the proposal if your proposal is a social science proposal I don't think that you must put you must mention some social objectives of course general objectives but you can also mention them if they are important if for example in the scientific excellence you are talking about multidisciplinary isn't it and you are going to make a biology research to improve something medical isn't it one of your objectives can be general objectives in the proposal can be how you will improve the link of the biology results with the rate of the understanding of vaccination of the society it can certainly be if you have actions in this direction you can mention it that depends on the concept of your proposal what you are planning to do in your next 2-3 years of your career is required and that's one of the main strengths of the proposal so how much flexibility is there once you get the grant but finding is it for you to stick to the exact proposal that you submitted like can you add short space or segments or do you have to do them if you propose them although there are different developments in your project that's a rather tricky question yeah in principle it's not so flexible for major changes you need to make a contract amendment if you change something that is major in your project because you sign a contract when the proposal is approved what is signed actually is your proposal by the commission and it is attached to a contract saying that I'm going to implement this proposal and not another one and the reviewers that are called to evaluate your proposal they are going to read what you have written and they are going to see what you have produced so if this what you produced is different from what you have proposed you will have a problem there is a kind of flexibility of course if there is an advance of the science and this kind of stuff but major changes need which is heavy procedure and I don't recommend it it's a nightmare there is the CV that presented in the presentation however the evaluators are free to evaluate the CVs following their own criteria which means that they have to relate the CV of the evaluator to the research that he is doing this is the concept it's not that he is very good or not good but as individual CV but if this CV fits to the project for example if I see in your CV that you have worked only in the archaeological field as a historian and suddenly you are going to do a very advanced multidisciplinary research going towards museology and social implication in local development in archaeological sites but that's not exactly fit you have to prove that you have done something at least at that direction you don't start from nothing and then how you improve your skills in this direction of course it is appreciated to have some publications in peer reviewed journals to have participation to have teaching experience is important in some cases in order to be able to transfer your knowledge but there are no standards actually to say if you don't have that you cannot go on it depends on your proposal a lot and also in the evaluator's views sometimes I'll just check if someone from Twitter said something but I think otherwise we can just so no questions on Twitter so I think we can finish thank you very much for your attention thanks George thank you too and good luck really